Microsoft Corp. on Thursday released to beta its Office Communicator Mobile client, which extends the instant messaging and presence awareness of its LCS to smart phones and PDAs based on the Windows Mobile operating system.
Office Communicator Mobile will also allow Live Communications Server users to make voice over IP calls from Wi-Fi-enabled Windows Mobile phones to PCs and vice versa while within the corporate network, said Paul Duffy, senior product manager for Microsoft Office Communicator Mobile, in Redmond, Wash.
The mobile clients user interface is based on the Office Communicator 2005 desktop client, which in June of this year replaced Windows Messenger as Microsofts preferred client for LCS.
General availability of Office Communicator Mobile is slated for the first half of 2006.
Microsoft is also extending its enterprise IM and presence technologies to Research In Motion Ltd.s BlackBerry users through connectivity with LCS and the BlackBerry Enterprise Server.
IBM has also teamed up with RIM to extend its Lotus Sametime enterprise IM and presence to BlackBerry devices.
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