MCS Forum in Boulder

Last week was a real treat for me - I attended an industry conference that was right here in Boulder, Colorado.  Usually I have to travel half-way across the country, but not only was this one just a 10 minute drive from my home, but it was a lot of fun, and I got to bring home an award for Gold Systems.

This was the first ever MCS Forum, an event dedicated to theMicrosoft Communications Server product, aka Office Communications Server.  Thomas Cross, who put on the event and did a great job of keeping everyone entertained and well fed, asked me to be the first speaker of the morning.

I did a live demo of how we've extended Communications Server to add social networking capabilities, such as Twitter.  I've written about that before and recorded several demos, and Microsoft has even written a case study on it.  You can read the Microsoft case study here.

But the main point of my talk at the MCS Forum was that this product isn't just a new communications system or even a PBX replacement, but rather it is a platform that will be extended and built on in ways that are just now becoming clear.  I believe the shift from the traditional propriety PBX hardware mindset to open, extensible software communications platforms will be as big as the shift was from mainframes to PCs, or landlines to smart phones.

I'll bet the MCS Forum will be three times as big next year because it delivered great information about how this industry is going to evolve, and it brought together customers and vendors who are making it happen.  If you missed it this year, put it on your schedule to attend it next year.  Check out Tom's blog at http://crosstalk-techtionary.blogspot.com/  or the mscforum.org website.