Clever Microsoft technology for voice quality

Microsoft is not always associated with quality. However, the forthcoming OCS 2007 which is expected to be in the market by September 2007 has managed to pull a punch. Microsoft has been boldly professing the future of telephony for sometime now. First at VoiceCon SanFrancisco 2007, it was Jeff Raikes who sent the PBX manufacturers into panic mode by predicting that there will be 100 million softphone users by 2009 and that the cost of per line telephony would decline by 50% then from its present price levels.

Later, Gurdeep Singh Pall mentioned at CeBIT in March 2007 that Psytechnics has credited Microsoft OCS to provide better quality of service for voice call when compared to Cisco Call Manager.

Until today like Matt McGillen, I believed it to be a marketing gimmick to move away the communication conversation from the home turf of Cisco. I had read what Matt had found out, but could understand the ramifications when Mike Hollier, the CTO and founder of Psytechnics explained to me how it works.

Microsoft has built interesting technology that rapidly changes the buffer size resulting in improved performance. Their real time audio codec makes use of variable bit rate transmission that along with varying buffer size improves the performance. Moreover, the technology uses the silence mode more effectively than competition. Also, Microsoft is making use of Forward Error Correction (FEC). Overall, Microsoft has been clever in their usage of software technology to score points over competitors hardware technology. I wonder if the industry will conspire to prove Jeff Raikes right!