The deal with Waterloo, Ontario-based RIM means its devices will now be able to connect to a Microsoft Office Live Communications Server 2005 (LCS) for IM and presence services, which makes the BlackBerry more attractive by extending its features beyond email. This is in line with the company’s overall strategy of broadening its offer beyond its area of core competence.
As for Microsoft, the deal represents another reason for companies to buy LCS licenses, said Neil Laver, head of sales and marketing for Microsoft’s Real Time Collaboration (RTC) Group in the UK. These come in two flavors, Regular and Enterprise, the latter offering including things like failover clustering and integration with SQL databases for message archiving.
The announcement reveals again that Microsoft is becoming more of a federal organization that a centralized state. Earlier this year it licensed its ActiveSync synchronization technology for Exchange to the Symbian alliance, one of the archrivals to Windows Mobile (the new converged name for Pocket PC and Windows Smartphone).
The logic there was that it was more important to boost Exchange’s standing on mobile devices vis-a -vis the BlackBerry service that to protect the in-house mobile OS against Symbian. Now the Redmond, Washington-based giant is enabling the market leader in push email to offer some of the features of the RTC box of goodies, though Laver was quick to point out that, in parallel with the announcement with RIM, Microsoft also announced it plans to deliver an LCS client on Windows Mobile-based phones.
This is the mobile version of the Microsoft Communicator 2005 desktop product from the RTC Group, due to be launched in the next couple of months. Laver said the mobile version will offer presence, IM and access to corporate directories from mobile devices, not to mention web conferencing and videoconferencing in later iterations.
Laver added that, while the deal with RIM will also require a small client to be loaded onto BlackBerries, it’s likely the experience won’t be as functionally rich as the one on Windows Mobile devices. Indeed, the joint announcement mentioned only IM and presence, whereas the Communicator client on Windows Mobile promises the full gamut of RTC capabilities, together with integration with other Microsoft apps back at the office.
The client software itself won’t be charged for by either Microsoft on the Windows Mobile phones or BlackBerry, since it is designed to drive LCS revenue. That said, users will have to pay a client access fee to access LCS, as well as a few dollars more for internet access, said Laver.
