May 20, 2004
By Melanie Turek, Principal Research Analyst, Nemertes Research, Melanie@nemertes.com

Two recent announcements illustrate a key trend within the collaboration and communications landscape: the pending integration of telephony and applications. Last week, Microsoft (NASDAQ: MSFT) and MCI (MCIA.PK) announced a global strategic relationship to develop and co-market communication and collaboration solutions, such as access to presence-based services for VoIP. Currently, the vendors are working on an integrated PC and telephony solution that will let users set up conference calls on MCI’s network from within select Microsoft Office applications.

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