Microsoft Corp. (MSFT) has been in the news a lot of late, most notably due to its unsolicited takeover bid for Yahoo. Progress in their unified communications partnership with Nortel was charted this week, and they also announced on Monday that they were acquiring the Sidekick cell phone maker Danger.
Microsoft vs. Yahoo Not Over Yet
Although Yahoo! Inc. (YHOO) flatly rejected Microsoft’s $44.6 billion takeover bid, nobody seems to think M$ is going to walk away sulking. According to a report in Cnet news, analysts say Microsoft has two options: up the ante and hope the offer gets accepted, or take it to the shareholders with a tender offer and a proxy fight for control of the board. Interestingly enough, the window for electing board members opens tomorrow, and closes on March 14th. Anybody see a pattern here?
While nobody thinks some serious competition for Google in the search engine market would be a bad thing (Microsoft + Yahoo = Big Mess?), the Justice Department has already said it will look at the deal for anti trust issues.
MS, Nortel Unified Communications Agenda Progress Report
Microsoft’s eighteen month old partnership with Nortel Networks (NT), dubbed the Innovative Communications Alliance (ICA), was previewed in an article on Networkworld. Among the offerings to date resulting from the alliance are
- Converged Office – converges VoIP, email, instant messaging, and presence into one application
- Integrated Branch – uses Nortel’s Secure Router 4134 to deploy Converged Office across branch offices
- Nortel Multimedia Conferencing/MS Office Communicator 2007 – add multimedia conferencing to the mix
- Nortel Communication Server 1000 and Exchange 2007 native SIP interoperability – shared signaling platform for unified communications.
The ICA plans to culminate in 2010 with a single software solution tightly integrated with Nortel telephony products in the form of Microsoft’s Office Communications Server. It has been said, mostly by Microsoft and Nortel, that the future of enterprise communications lies in software, eventually eliminating the need for a hardware PBX.
Microsoft Seeks Danger
Apparently wanting to unify communications even more, MS jumps into the consumer cell phone business announcing that it will buy Danger, the maker of T-Mobile’s Sidekick, for an undisclosed amount. Danger, not being a very profitable company, had already filed to go public last year. Microsoft made an offer they didn’t refuse, putting an end to the planned IPO.
Some have wondered why MS would want to buy an unprofitable cell phone company, whose popular Sidekick does not even use the Windows Mobile operating system. Could it be in answer to the Apple iPhone, or Google’s Android mobile operating system? Or maybe they just want another very user friendly OS for the lower end of the market.
I think we will be seeing a lot more of Microsoft in the news in the coming weeks and months.
i use both open office and microsoft office and i would say that microsoft office is more responsive and user friendly “”
Its really good to know about nortel communication policies. Great post. Keep posing more on this subject.
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