For at least a decade PBX manufacturers would speak to me off the record about their trepidation regarding Microsoft entering the phone business. For those companies who hoped the day would never come, they should probably avoid reading this article from TMCnet’s Greg Galitzine detailing the availability of Response Point.

 

Microsoft has partnered with a number of companies to bring these systems to market. Some of the partners consist of Quanta Computer, D-Link and more recently Aastra. The cost for the systems is between $2,500-$3,000 for 4-5 users.

 

I have used Microsoft’s Response Point phone system both in TMC Labs and in Microsoft’s Redmond office. It has a solid feature set and in some areas such as speech recognition is ahead of most other comparable products on the market.

 

Still, this is a new release and with all new products, it is unlikely to be 100% perfect. If there are any glaring omissions, Tom Keating didn’t find them in his initial review.

 

Microsoft is very serious about this market (see Microsoft OCS 2007 vs. Microsoft Response Point) and even offers financing to move these units into the hands of Joe (is Jane more politically correct?) entrepreneur.

 

Should small phone system manufacturers be shaking in their boots? The answer is unclear so far. It will take time for resellers who are not telephony people to be able to sell telecom solutions effectively. In the mean time, small phone system manufacturers will have time to position their products against Microsoft effectively. It is also unclear how anxious the majority of the Microsoft reseller base is to move this product.

 

Again, time will tell. Whenever there is new activity in the communications space – especially from a company like Microsoft who is adding some innovation, the customer wins.