Microsoft Unified Communications technologies can help you streamline your communications processes and establish a scalable and protected communications infrastructure. In so doing, you can also increase overall efficiency and reduce costs for your business.



How? By using the power of software to deliver a complete communications solution – incorporating messaging, voice and video – across the devices and applications that your people use every day.

Our vision is simple: to integrate the experiences you associate with the telephone (phone calls, voicemail and conferencing) with the work done on computers (documents, spreadsheets, instant messaging, email, calendars). We call it Unified Communications.

We believe Unified Communications will transform business in the coming decade in the same way email changed the business landscape in the 1990s.

Just imagine the possibilities...

Expand all

	Your computer starts to work like a phone Presence is one of the key benefits of Unified Communications because it unites all the contact information stored in Active Directory with all the ways people communicate: phone, conferencing, instant messaging, e-mail, calendaring. A person's availability, their contact information, and the ability to communicate with them are integrated and always just a click away. To call someone, you just click on their name. The computer places the call. It doesn't matter if you see their name in an email, inside Microsoft Office Word, or on a Windows SharePoint Services site: their contact information and the ability to reach them is always present.
	Your phone starts to work like a computer Try this with a standard office phone: call someone, then add someone else to the call. Now add ten people. Now, turn it into a live video call. Could you do it? Is it even possible? With Microsoft Unified Communications technologies, you simply click to call. Click again and you can launch a conference call. Need video? It's a click away. It's that easy.
	Voicemail becomes email Voice mail arrives in your Microsoft Office Outlook inbox, right beside your e-mail. That might not sound impressive, but have you ever tried to forward a voice mail using the touchtone keypad on a telephone? When voice mail becomes email, you can forward it just like any email: to one person, a work team, or an entire department.
	IT effort is minimal Change like this usually means a lot of new hardware, extra work for IT, and a vastly more complex infrastructure. But not with Microsoft Unified Communications technologies.
	VoIP as you are Microsoft uses software instead of hardware. Microsoft Office Communications Server 2007 - the server that delivers presence, instant messaging and audio and video conferencing - integrates seamlessly with your existing telecommunications infrastructure, including your current PABX.
	Unified Communications streamline infrastructure Microsoft Unified Communications technologies use Active Directory to unify the entire corporate directory - names, PABX extensions, email addresses, and logons. This simplifies IT administration.
	Your system is flexible and future-ready By using a software solution to deliver Unified Communications, your business can stay flexible and embrace innovations as they come. When emerging technologies and changing business needs require your communications infrastructure to adapt, all you have to do is upgrade your software, not your hardware.