Microsoft Announces Intention To Acquire PlaceWare

The acquisition of PlaceWare indicates, among other things, that Microsoft is planning to incorporate one-to-many real time data presentation and conferencing capabilities as part of its upcoming suite of conferencing and collaboration solutions. Now the company doesn’t have to build what it has purchased. PlaceWare also has APIs to its existing platform and a developer community currently providing complementary software solutions.

While this acquisition and the integration of PlaceWare into Microsoft’s Information Worker group will certainly make it more difficult for vendors currently offering "pure play" webconferencing for premises to introduce and sell their solutions, it should not overshadow the facts that, first, presentation is but one of many applications for real time communications and second, the integration into Microsoft will not be an instantaneous process.

Another asset that Microsoft acquired with PlaceWare includes intellectual properties (including a patent) for easily traversing NATs and firewalls. Security is taken very seriously at Microsoft, and in the enterprises that use networks connected to the Internet (are there any that don’t?). Without a well integrated and very well designed approach to resolving addresses and establishing real time communications between users and devices behind firewalls, the entire Greenwich development could be on very shaky ground.

It has been assured that the engineering team responsible for the development of the PlaceWare’s webconferencing technologies and this patent will remain at Microsoft. This will be essential to the smooth transition and integration of platforms, however, some of the ground work has already been done. PlaceWare announced in June 2002 that it offers a plug in to tie together Outlook calendaring and messaging with PlaceWare services. PlaceWare RapidMeeting is not unique in design or implementation but certainly demonstrates the extensibility of the platform.

Satisfied PlaceWare partners and customers are also valuable to Microsoft. A critical mass of mainstream enterprise users who have already demonstrated a willingness to learn how to use and pay for real time communications services has taken years to build. Transitioning these customers to new homes (inside Microsoft or to Microsoft partners) will be one of the many interesting challenges in the year ahead.

While readers and visitors of StreamingMedia.com are paying more attention to changes in the Microsoft Digital Media Division than elsewhere, it’s a good idea to begin thinking about how system level services such as instant messaging, text chat, data, audio and videoconferencing will integrate into streaming media solutions. Already, some interactive gaming platforms leverage the real time capabilities in Windows XP to offer voice services between players. Imagine working with an advertising or marketing specialist, exchanging text messages or speaking while sharing a screen in which the story board is displayed or the rough cut is playing from a server.

The lines between rich media viewing, communications and collaboration are getting increasingly difficult to draw and the promise of seamless integration between dynamic media types and transactional business applications is one step closer.