Voice and Video Usage Rapidly Increasing With MSN and Windows Live Messenger; Alliance Model Central to Integrating VoIP Capabilities Further Across Windows Live Services
At the spring 2006 VON Conference & Expo, Microsoft outlined its vision for extending an integrated IP communications capability throughout Windows Live services to support VOIP and Video Strategy aimed at allowing a rising generation of inveterate multi-taskers to leap from their usual instant-message round robins into real-time phone conversations and video conferences for consumers worldwide.
Blake Irving, corporate vice president of the MSN Communication Services and Member Platform group, detailed the company’s voice over Internet protocol (VoIP) strategy and vision for Windows Live in his keynote speech.
Spring VON Expo is the largest VoIP exhibition in the world, with more than 300 companies showcasing their voice-data communications technology and products.
Microsoft’s strategy seems to be based on the belief that using its Windows Live application services to integrate voice and video with e-mail and instant messaging will be the best way to continue growing its consumer communication services.
"Our mission with Windows Live is to deepen people’s relationships with whomever and whatever matters most to them," Irving said. We will get there by working closely with the whole ecosystem of telecommunications, Internet services and hardware manufacturing partners to build a complete presence- and contact-centric communications experience. Voice and video will play a critical role as a data type that brings relationships to life online, taking us from an era of black and white to Technicolor.
Blake demonstrated an array of Windows Live communications services that are currently being beta tested and are scheduled to be released late this year.
The company currently serves 205 million MSN instant messenger users and 26 million simultaneous messenger users, as well as 230 million Hotmail e-mail users, Irving said during his presentation at the VON Conference.
He said there are legions of high school and college-age computer users that routinely juggle multiple instant-message sessions with friends and acquaintances, and that Microsoft believes that increasingly these users will choose to move to voice and video links with selected friends and family members.
Only 9 percent of this online community currently uses VOIP (Voice over IP) and video, but Irving said he believes that the new Windows Live communications services that Microsoft is deploying will allow this number to grow by as much as 20 percent during the next 12 months.
Microsoft today offers customers free video conversation (integrated audio and video) powered by Logitech and free PC-to-PC voice capabilities powered by Microsoft technology via MSN Messenger.
The company has seen a sharp uptick in customer use of voice and video services over the past six months, including record usage in January. MSN Messenger hosted voice sessions totaling more than 800 million minutes in January 2006. Video usage on the service is currently growing even faster than voice usage alone, with video conversation connecting customers for almost 1.1 billion minutes in January. In addition, stand-alone webcam usage totaled an additional 7 billion minutes in January.
Additionally, Windows Live Messenger includes one-way PC-to-phone calling capabilities in several markets that are part of a pay-for-use service provided by Verizon.
More than 20 million users on average are using our voice conversation service in MSN and Windows Live Messenger each month, Irving said. While the number is impressive, it is only a small portion of our 205 million active MSN Messenger users each month. There is still a lot of room to grow.
Leading the list is the Microsoft Windows Live Mail Desktop, which is a free e-mail client that will enable users to right-click on their contact names to start VOIP PC-to-phone or PC-to-PC voice or video conversations directly from e-mail.
Microsoft is also working with major phone manufacturers, including Royal Philips Electronics in certain European countries, Australia, New Zealand and Latin America, and Uniden America in North America, to produce new phones that connect to a PC and enable users to work with Windows Live Messenger to make PC-to-PC and one-way PC-to-phone calls.
Users can also use these phones to make calls over the PSTN (Public Switched Telephone Network) using their existing service providers, according to Irving.
Microsoft will also test Windows Live Search voice capability that will allow users to search for businesses or services on the Internet and place phone calls to phone numbers listed in the search result.
He demonstrated for the audience how he could open a Hotmail message from colleague and click on the contact name to set up a video conference in which Irving discussed their plans to arrange a golf outing during a business trip to Washington. Also attached to the message was a search of golf courses in the Washington area.
The search included aerial photos of the golf course and surrounding neighborhood to show whether it was a good place to golf. The search also provided a phone link that would allow Irving to ring the golf course to reserve a tee time. But that part of the demo broke down, much to Irving’s frustration.
Corporate IT managers would not likely to favor overlaying volume-hungry VOIP systems on an existing corporate data network, both for performance and data security considerations, Irving said. But it could become more acceptable as voice and data networks continue to converge.
Irving said these features could certainly be applied to the enterprise or SMB (small and midsize business), but that there were barriers to adoption, especially in the enterprise sector.
Furthermore, IT managers are unlikely to favor replacing existing enterprise telephone networks with integrated VOIP and messaging services, at least until they have fully depreciated their existing systems.
Irving outlined Microsoft’s plans to continue to integrate voice and video capabilities throughout Windows Live services, with contacts playing a critical role in how the services are introduced.
"Windows Live Contacts will act as the ‘plumbing’ that brings life to the relationships between people’s online contacts and the services they use," Irving said.
"With more than 13 billion contacts in people’s online address books today; our goal with Windows Live is to enable people to take instant action on any of their online contacts across our services. Voice and video remain a central ‘action’ in our Windows Live vision of enabling rich, seamless and simplified connections that make people’s online world better."
The Windows Live services may become more acceptable in the small business market where the business owner-manager is also the IT administrator and has the bandwidth to implement and oversee the deployment and use of the voice and video services, Irving said.