It’s amazing how Microsoft keeps coming late to the game, claims to have invented stuff that’s been around for years (and work much, much better than its own products) and then tries (and often) conquers the market through — highly controversial — moves.

The ‘VoIP As You Are’ software promotion is hilarious. In its attempt to lure people away from ‘expensive’ PBX vendors Microsoft, a company that happens to be a convicted monopolist, goes as far as saying that ‘You’ll no longer be tied to one provider and a limited line of products’. Funny, I thought that’s exactly what you’ll be if you opt for their suite. Its spin on ’software’ as more flexible to the ‘expensive’ hardware PBX stations is also ludicrous. Sure, software is cheaper, but Microsoft software isn’t particularly cheap or functional. Oh the irony..

At a time when millions of people and organisations all over the world are getting rid of Microsoft’s proprietary software and formats (Office, Exchange, Windows), the whole promotion seems like its playing to the clueless MCP/Windows administrator types that have never heard of and are probably too ignorant to look for proper VoIP systems and would be ‘thrilled’ to mess with the company’s PBX system and ‘integrate’ their botched windows software with Office and Exchange.

Obviously, from a marketing point of view this is a very wise move from Microsoft, as it’s exactly those people and installations — sadly still the majority — that are going to discover and rave about how great VoIP is, more than half a decade after Asterisk was released to the world.