Micosoft Goes Live With Server Name ChangeMicosoft Goes Live With Server Name Change

What would a major Microsoft release be without multiple name changes?

The vendor announced Thursday that Microsoft Office Real-Time Communications Server 2003, the anticipated instant-messaging and presence-awareness engine formerly known by the code name Greenwich, will hit the market later this year as Microsoft Office Live Communications Server 2003. This marks the third name change for the product, which added the Office in May to reflect its addition to the pending Microsoft Office System. Lead product manager Ed Simnett says the change resulted from customer feedback indicating that the Real-Time moniker didn't sufficiently address the human aspect of the product.

Microsoft is preparing for the Live server's next milestone, called the release to manufacturing, which is the last stage of the product's development before it becomes generally available. Simnett says no dates have been set for either, but that the release to manufacturing will occur sometime before the end of the third quarter, and general availability should follow that by three to six weeks. That means the server--long promised for availability this summer--could hit the market as late as November.

The Live server represents Microsoft's bet that enterprisewide presence awareness--the ability to see the online availability of others--is the key technology for embedding real-time collaboration in a variety of business applications and processes. The server will integrate with Microsoft's other collaborative platforms--Windows Server (which includes the Windows SharePoint Services team workspace tool), Exchange Server, and SharePoint Portal Server--to make presence a pervasive part of communications and document-oriented processes. Microsoft also is working with a number of software partners on integrating the Live server with third-party enterprise applications.