Microsoft Deploys Joint Genesys-Microsoft Real-Time Collaboration Solution to 40,000 Users at its US Headquarters in Redmond

Genesys Telecommunications Laboratories, Inc., an Alcatel company (Paris: CGEP.PA, NYSE: ALA), today announced that Microsoft has deployed a joint, telephony-enabling collaboration solution that utilizes Genesys Enterprise Telephony Software (GETS) with Microsoft® Office Live Communications Server 2005 and the Microsoft Office Communicator client. This collaboration solution provides new desktop telephony control capabilities for Microsoft users, allowing them to collaborate with colleagues, access availability and presence information, and seamlessly control phone functionality via the computer. Microsoft deployed the technology across 40,000 desktops at its Redmond campus in early May and reports that there are already 20,000 active users. "Microsoft's internal deployment of this solution, utilizing GETS and our Microsoft Real-Time Collaboration platform, is already generating productivity benefits, and user feedback has been very positive for this feature," said Marc Sanders, senior product manager, Real-Time Collaboration, at Microsoft. "Our employees say the telephony-enabled solution allows them to work more productively and to take greater advantage of real-time collaboration within their existing productivity and collaboration applications."GETS enhances information workers' desktop real-time collaboration experience by enabling users to call contacts directly from within the right-click presence menu that is displayed in several familiar Microsoft Office applications, such as Outlook, Excel, Word and SharePoint. GETS also provides the telephony presence info that is displayed within Communicator. The technology maximizes worker productivity by saving time they otherwise would spend switching between applications to find contacts, and calling or setting up meetings and conference calls when contacts are busy, on the phone or away. The solution also provides the ability for users to receive alerts of incoming calls via a pop-up window that identifies the caller by name. In addition, users can receive e-mail notifications for all missed calls on their desktop phones, dynamically deflect incoming calls to another number (mobile, home or other phone), utilize PBX-supported conferencing, and gain access to advanced telephony features from their computer, such as call forwarding, transfer and do-not-disturb."By leveraging the GETS telephony capabilities into the Microsoft LCS/Communicator desktop experience, we are helping workers save time, increase their productivity and enhance communication with business contacts," said Mathew Frazer, vice president, Enterprise Solutions Group, Genesys. "Now, two key tools for everyday communication - the phone and computer - are working together to create efficiencies unlike any the user has previously experienced."Importantly, the solution also provides enterprises with the ability to leverage their existing telephony infrastructure, whether they are currently working in a TDM or an IP environment. The inherent interoperability of GETS with leading PBXs and IP telephony platforms means the converged communication solution can be deployed without "ripping and replacing" the existing infrastructure, thereby helping companies avoid significant capital expenditures."The ability to use either existing PBX or next-generation IP networks means companies can 'future-proof' their technology and, more importantly, their investment," said Frazer. "Depending on a company's existing structure, we can support them during a migration, for instance from a TDM environment to an IP environment."The combined solution, including GETS, Live Communications Server and Communicator 2005, is now available for enterprise implementation.

AJAX will revolutionize web development

Traditional web applications allow users to fill out forms, and when these forms are submitted, a request is sent to a web server. The web server acts upon whatever was sent by the form, and then responds back by sending a new web page. A lot of bandwidth is wasted since much of the HTML from the first page is present in the second page. Because a request to the web server has to be transmitted on every interaction with the application, the application's response time is dependent on the response time of the web server. This leads to user interfaces that are much slower than their native counterparts.
AJAX applications, on the other hand, can send requests to the web server to retrieve only the data that is needed, usually using SOAP or some other XML-based web services dialect, and using JavaScript in the client to process the web server response. The result is more responsive applications, since the amount of data interchanged between the web browser and web server is vastly reduced. Web server processing time is also saved, since a lot of this is done on the computer from which the request came.
Image showing how a traditional web application handles user interaction comparing it to how an Ajax application handles it.
Image showing how the different components of Ajax applications interacts with each other comparing it to how traditional web applications do it.
A concrete example: Many sites use a table element to display tabular data. To change the sort order of the data with a traditional web application, the user would click on the table header which would send a request to the web server to reload the page with the new sort order. The web server would then construct a new SQL query with the new sort order, execute it and fetch the data from the database and reconstruct the web page and send it back to the user. Using AJAX technologies, this event could instead have been handled with a client-side JavaScript that dynamically generates a view of the tabular data with DHTML