Microsoft develops 'Office Communicator Mobile'

Bangalore, May 17: Microsoft's India Development Center (MIDC) today announced their involvement in an end-to-end project to develop 'Microsoft Office Communicator Mobile,' a unified communications client that provides information workers with a premier mobile collaboration experience through native integration of mobile applications with enterprise-grade, real-time communications tools. Communicator Mobile will extend features of Microsoft Office Live Communications Server 2005 and Microsoft Office Communicator to the Windows Mobile 2003 SE and Windows Mobile 5.0 platform, both Pocket PC Edition and Smartphone.

The development process included getting feedback from usage within Microsoft, Beta users outside Microsoft, and TAP (Technology Adoption Program) partners. The suggestions and feedback from user groups were incorporated into the product in the early stages of the development cycle.

Recently unveiled during Steve Ballmer's keynote at 3GSM in Barcelona Spain and based on the user interface of the Microsoft Office Communicator 2005 desktop client, the client goes beyond simple voice services, incorporating connected communication modes such as more secure instant messaging (IM), presence awareness and integrated VoIP-telephony.

Commenting on the product being completely developed out of India, Mr. Srini Koppulu, Vice President and Managing Director, Microsoft India Development Center said, "Our India Development Center plays an important role in contributing to future innovations at Microsoft and we are proud to be at the core of Microsoft's global development initiatives. The release of Communicator Mobile is an endorsement of Microsoft's mission to "innovate, energize, and support Microsoft investments for the mobile user experience."

Communicator Mobile client increases potential data revenue for mobile operators by driving demand for business-class devices with an enterprise-grade client, adding rich, real-time collaboration capabilities to mobile data networks.

Mr. Sudeep Bharati, Director, Mobile Devices Group, Microsoft India Development Center, said, "The project was conceived in the beginning of 2005, and in just over a year, we are in a position to release version 1.0 of the product. This was possible given the aggressive planning, team dedication and the expertise that each developer brought to the table. This product will complete our Unified Communications vision by adding the support for the Windows Mobile platform. We will continue to build on this strong momentum and will bring many more new and cool products and technologies from our India Development center in the near future."

MIDC has built a strong center for excellence in the area of Mobility with over 175 developers dedicated to creating software for global markets and to cater to the needs of Mobile Information workers, Mobile application developers and Mobile operators. Office Mobile, SQL Mobile, Visual Studio for Devices, Communicator Mobile and Connected Services Framework are some of the key pieces of this portfolio that we are building out of MIDC Hyderabad.

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