Microsoft Maps "Live" Server PlansMicrosoft Maps "Live" Server Plans

Microsoft's drive to meld its existing Live Communication Server and Live Meeting code bases is coming into focus.

Next fall, the company plans an updated LCS server, code-named Vienna, that will offer improved support of federation between servers at separate sites, sources familiar with the plans say. Currently, interoperability between distributed LCS servers requires a special connector, but the results are spotty, solution provider partners say. LCS provides what Microsoft calls "secure instant messaging."

On the heels of Vienna, plans also call for a new LCS client, code-named Istanbul. That software will be completely rewritten in C# and add support for Microsoft's Ring Cam, according to sources familiar with the plan.

Over the longer term, a new server due to ship in 2005--code-named Kiev--promises full integration of LCS with Live Meeting and offers links to Microsoft's upcoming Longhorn operating system, sources say. To date, Live Meeting has been a Web-based conferencing system available as a paid service.

Converging the Microsoft-centric LCS--once known as Greenwich and then as Real-Time Collaboration Server--and Live Meeting won't be a trivial task. Microsoft acquired the Live Meeting technology with its acquisition of PlaceWare a little more than a year ago. PlaceWare offered hosted Web conferencing, and its servers were based on the distinctly non-Microsoft world of Java and Unix. Since that time, Microsoft executives have said that they continue to see Live Meeting as a hosted system.

A Microsoft spokesman declined to comment on the product plans.