Another interesting third-party product is The Mesa Group's Automated Real-Time Translation module for Live Communications Server. You type your data into Windows Messenger in English and your correspondent receives the information in his or her native language, and vice versa. This module facilitates translation between various languages and English and supports several alphabets, including Chinese, Arabic, Cyrillic, and Latin. Language translation is often an inexact science, but the custom dictionaries support lexicons, jargon, slang, abbreviations, acronyms, and dialects. The value of such a tool is questionable for everyday use, but you can imagine scenarios in which it might prove useful: information services in foreign countries or maybe even international dating services.
Siemens's OpenScape is a real-time collaboration environment built on top of Live Communications Server. OpenScape uses Live Communications Server's presence features to determine whether an employee is available. For example, imagine you want to virtually convene your team members who are available by phone with audio-only capability, logged on to the network with audio and video capability, or on mobile devices. OpenScape uses Live Communications Server presence information about the various users to determine the best mode of communications with which to contact each user and engage him or her in the meeting.
Fenestrae Communication Server and RADVISION's IMfirst also offer interesting additions to Live Communications Server's core functionality. Fenestrae has long been involved in the enterprise fax and Short Message Service (SMS) messaging arena, so to see the company integrate this kind of extensibility into Live Communications Server isn't surprising. Similarly, SIP's growing importance as a session protocol for audio and videoconferencing has spurred RADVISION into action, resulting in integration between Live Communications Server's peer-to-peer (P2P) messaging capability with the more sophisticated functionality you expect to see in a bona fide multiparty audio and videoconferencing solution.
Preparing for Tomorrow's Enterprise IM
Strong similarities exist between the development of IM-based communication systems today and the development of the email systems of yesterday. Standards are emerging—the ongoing battle between SIMPLE and Jabber's Extensible Messaging and Presence Protocol (XMPP) is reminiscent of the X.400 versus SMTP face-off. Similarly, although widespread adoption of IM systems is increasing, widespread interoperability isn't. Even discrete deployments of Live Communications Server in one company are unable to easily communicate with Live Communications Server deployments in another company. Simplifying interorganizational Live Communications Server communication and enabling federated Live Communications Server topologies is high on Microsoft's radar for the next version of its product, code-named Vienna. You can expect to see Live Communications Server mature into a more mainstream product for Microsoft. As it does, you'll see Microsoft make improvements in the areas of manageability, reporting, and archiving.
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