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• March 6, 2003 •
Microsoft released the first widely available beta version of its corporate server software technology for instant messaging and real-time collaboration, code-named "Greenwich."
"The delivery of this beta represents a milestone in the development of the 'Greenwich' technology, which is a component of delivering Microsoft's overall real-time collaboration vision," said Anoop Gupta, corporate vice president of the Real-Time Collaboration Business Unit at Microsoft. "We seek to profoundly change how corporations communicate, by bringing together best-of-breed presence and instant-messaging technologies with enterprise-grade control and manageability. Presence-based communications will revolutionize the way information workers collaborate, in the same way e-mail changed corporate communications in the late 1980s and early 1990s."
Microsoft first announced its intent to move into the corporate IM market in November 2002. Microsoft expects its new "Greenwich" technology to be adopted by customers seeking to help secure existing instant-messaging communications within their enterprise and with trusted partners, by enterprises seeking integration of IM and presence information in line-of-business applications, and by the communications industry.
According to Microsoft, the benefits of the "Greenwich" real-time communications platform include the following:
Microsoft joins a list of technology names that have signaled their intent to compete for the corporate IM market, including AOL Time Warner's America Online unit, Yahoo, IBM's Lotus division, Sun Microsystems and Oracle.
"Greenwich" is slated for commercial release in mid-2003.
