Mike Rhodin delivered a Keynote address today at VoiceCon and made the following announcments. IBM acquired WebDialogs which positions them to compete with Webex, and others for the hosted conferencing services. On the WebDialogs web site Sametime has already been branded as the “on premise” conferencing solution, while WebDialogs Unyte service becomes Sametime Unyte. There is a 14 day trial of Unyte available, I will have to check it out. IBM then announced that Sametime would now become a family of products Sametime Entry, Standard, and Advanced, and Sametime Unified Telephony. Sametime Entry – this is Sametime chat and presence awareness, but does not include web conferencing, but if you need a hosted web conferencing provider well, the way I read the press release does not look like plugins will be supported in the Entry client. Sametime Standard – this would appear to be Sametime as we know it today, chat, presence awareness, web conferencing, and the Sametime Gateway, as well as support for plugins and Office integration. Sametime Advanced – this will include persistent chat, broadcast tools, and the ability to share screens without entering a meeting. It also looks like advanced will contain some additional location based features. The Unified Telephony product using Siemens OpenScape technology is being designed to allow Sametime to integrate into existing telephony systems, and will simplify telephony integration for Sametime, especially if you have telephony equipment from multiple vendors. In addition there will be a Soft Phone for Sametime, and the ability to display your phone status in addition to your IM status. Sametime Standard is due out later this year (Sametime 8) with the other offerings due out early next year. WebDialogs Press ReleaseSametime Press Release
