Microsoft Buys PlaceWare To Bolster Collaboration OfferingsMicrosoft Buys PlaceWare To Bolster Collaboration Offerings

Having watched its market share erode in the wake of the rise of WebEx Communications Inc., Web-conferencing vendor PlaceWare Inc. Tuesday agreed to be acquired by Microsoft for an undisclosed price.

PlaceWare's online meeting service, which can accommodate up to 2,500 concurrent users in a session, will become part of a new real-time collaboration group in Microsoft's information workers business once the acquisition closes within 90 days, says Dan Leach, a Microsoft lead program manager. The new collaboration group will be led by Anoop Gupta, Bill Gates' technical adviser. Gupta will report to group VP Jeff Raikes.

Leach says PlaceWare will complement Microsoft's existing conferencing tool, NetMeeting, which enables peer-to-peer collaboration and application sharing between two users. Microsoft's customers have been asking the company to make conferencing and other collaboration tools easier to build into their everyday processes, and the PlaceWare acquisition is expected to help the vendor satisfy those requests, Leach says. "We can work together to make Web conferencing and collaboration as easy as E-mail and instant messaging is today."

The deal also will let PlaceWare take advantage of Microsoft's portfolio of partnerships and expand the service's capabilities. "We will be looking for long-term strategies that will help build more innovative technologies for the customers," says Janice Kepner, PlaceWare's senior director of branding and demand generation.

Microsoft intends to retain most of PlaceWare's 300 employees, although Leach acknowledged that cuts will be made wherever there are duplications between the two companies.