Your PBX is dead, dead, dead.

Microsoft (News - Alert)has announced that the next version of its popular unified communications software, code-named Communications Server “14,” will be available in the second half of 2010.

Gurdeep Singh Pall, corporate vice president of Microsoft’s Unified Communications (News - Alert)Group, demonstrated the new software solution today at VoiceCon Orlando 2010.

The unified communications solution, which was first introduced in 2007, brings click-to-dial functionality, ad-hoc conferencing and “presence” -- which is the ability to view the availability status of other users on the network -- to Microsoft Office, SharePoint and Exchange. It can be used with existing PBXs and IP phones – but the PBX (News - Alert)is no longer required as IP phones can now be integrated directly with the software to arrive a complete unified communications system supporting voice, email, chat and conferencing.

The new version of OCS, as per a press release, gives companies “a complete communications solution, including enterprise telephony … that works with what customers already have and allows them to embed communications in any application.”

“Office Communications Server has grown by double digits every year for the last three years, and is one of the fastest growing servers at Microsoft,” the release states. “Today, more than 70 percent of the Fortune 100 have OCS as well as 7 of the top 10 pharmaceutical companies, 8 of the top 10 aerospace companies, and 9 of the top 10 banks.”

During the demonstration at VoiceCon, Pall showed how the new version “helps people find colleagues based on their expertise through a new skill search feature; understand when their colleagues are available to collaborate and, with a new location-awareness feature, where they are available; easily initiate collaboration; and bring together the content, resources and people needed to work together.”

Microsoft is banking that UC will become the norm in business communications over the next few years. Gurdeep predicts that in three years more than 50 percent of all VoIP calls will incorporate more than just voice. What’s more Gurdeep predicts that in three years 75 percent of new business applications will include natively embedded communications.

Initially, Microsoft marketed OCS not as a replacement for legacy PBXs but as a way of enhancing an existing PBX’s functionality. Essentially OCS brought unified communications features such as presence to legacy, TDM-based PBXs.

But the feature sets that could be delivered to the phones via these legacy TDM PBXs were lacking due to port limitations. Seeking to bring better UC functionality to the IP phones, Microsoft ended up changing its strategy and messaging around OCS: You could continue to use your existing PBX, if you wanted to, but it was essentially obsolete. Instead, Microsoft started pushing for direct integration with OCS – thus bypassing the PBX entirely. This is what led to the company’s “Your PBX is Dead” decree last year.

Although no one is going to be ripping out their IP PBX and tossing it in the trash right away, Microsoft continues to proclaim that the advent of embedded unified communications signals the death of the PBX.

“Communications centered solely around the desk phone and built on hardware-based systems are quickly becoming a relic of the past,” Pall wrote in a blog post this week. “In fact, many of today’s PBXs belong in a museum; they are already artifacts of the past.”

Earlier this week, 12 Microsoft partners introduced new products and services that enhance Communications Server “14.” These include low-cost Internet protocol (IP) phones, branch office survivability solutions, call accounting software, and enhanced 911 solutions that augment Microsoft’s enterprise telephony offering.

Last week AudioCodes released a new software product that allows for direct integration between Microsoft Office Communications Server and AudioCodes’ (News - Alert)IP phones, as well as the IP phones of other major manufacturers. The new product -- SIP Phones Support (SPS) for Microsoft Unified Communications -- due for general release in July will help organizations migrating to Microsoft Office Communications Server keep their investment in their existing IP phones. It also gives them the freedom to choose from a wide range of IP phones in the marketplace which can now be integrated quickly and affordably with the OCS platform. What's more it will greatly help companies looking to “retire” their PBXs and use OCS as a pure standalone solution.

While referencing the “open ecosystem” of partners developing new solutions around OCS, including new IP phones, survivable branch appliances, E911 solutions, call recording and accounting software, Pall proclaimed that “the era of ‘mainframe economics’ in communications is over.”

“In the next three years, we predict that UC will become the norm in business communications, more than half of VoIP calls at work will include more than just voice, and your communications client will enable UC with more than 1 billion people,” Pall wrote. “Three years from now, new applications written by corporate developers, system integrators and software vendors will be communications-enabled by default. We predict that three out of every four new business applications will include embedded communications.”

More information about Communications Server can be found at http://www.microsoft.com/communicationsserver.

Patrick Barnard is a senior Web editor for TMCnet, covering call and contact center technologies. He also compiles and regularly contributes to TMCnet e-Newsletters in the areas of robotics, IT, M2M, OCS and customer interaction solutions. To read more of Patrick's articles, please visit his columnist page.

Edited by Patrick Barnard