As Microsoft continues to make headway in the unified communications world, it announced that it is purchasing Parlano, which provides group chat technology. According to the press release announcing the acquisition, after the deal closes, Microsoft will add the group chat functionality to Office Communications Server and Office Communicator, and plans to offer group chat as part of the standard client access license for Office Communications Server 2007 Software Assurance customers.
Parlano’s MindAlign product can be considered "chat rooms on steroids," offering real-time and persistent information – persistent chat, as some call it. Parlano notes that persistent group chat promotes activity-based group conversations and is a natural launching point for UC. MindAlign 2007 is based on SIP/SIMPLE, and uses LCS/OCS for presence, IM, message management, and spam and virus filters. With MindAlign, customers can start thinking across geographical and organizational barriers and cross different departments using persistent group chat by creating chat channels and inviting people from across the organization to participate, while putting communications that occurs in other areas like IM in a centralized place. Parlano was (rightfully) intent on not selling MindAlign as infrastructure, but instead looked at it from a business workflow perspective and the business value it provides (in other words, using communications integrated to optimize business processes!).
We all know that mobility is a critical (if not THE critical) element of a UC solution, and Parlano also offers MindAlign Mobile for mobile group communications supporting Palm OS, Blackberry, and Windows Mobile. The product offers mobile/desktop presence management using LCS, full support for federated chat group, channel participation enabling users to choose what channels and contacts to monitor when on the road, server-side content filtering, and standard device notifications
There are several reasons why this acquisition makes sense. The folks at Parlano saw early on that there’s not much of a future for a silo’d applications, and that chat (and persistent chat) need to be part of a UC platform for shared presence across the enterprise. MindAlign essentially adds groups messaging and persistent chat to LCS/OCS so that LCS/OCS provides shared presence across all UC-enabled applications, and the Microsoft Office Communicator client API’s enable application launching from within MindAlign.
In some ways, it’s a no-brainer that Microsoft acquired Parlano, which seemed to be setting itself up for such an acquisition. The MindAlign product only works with LCS/OCS and not with products from IBM, Cisco, etc. The product was designed in such as way as to complement LCS/OCS by offering capabilities such as federated group chat so that customers that are federated via LCS can be federated via MindAlign without needing additional software. MindAlign uses Microsoft’s public IM capability for IM with AOL, MSN, Hotmail users. From early on, Microsoft and Parlano engaged in joint field and marketing, with Microsoft’s aim of driving more LCS licenses, and the two companies have several joint customers.
The only area of "disconnect" in my view is that in MindAlign implementations, customers were using the MindAlign client, rather than the MOC client. This will obviously change as the MindAlign capabilities get integrated into MOC. When I last spoke with the Parlano folks, they mentioned that one of the next steps will be Sharepoint integration. This seems pretty likely to happen now.
Microsoft’s Gurdeep Singh Pall was quoted in the press release as saying "Parlano’s expertise added to Microsoft’s unified communications offering will deliver customers the most complete instant messaging and group chat product." Based on what I’ve seen of the Parlano product, I can’t help but agree.