By Sharla Sikes

Corporate computer behemoth Microsoft is further expanding its foray into the world of communications with VoIP products and updates.

Anyone familiar with Microsoft products—which is practically everyone—knows all about service packs. Keeping with tradition, Microsoft plans to release its first service pack for its Response Point VoIP phone systems later this year. 

“Small businesses rely heavily on the phone to communicate with customers, and want a solution that allows them to reliably reach as many customers as possible at a low cost,” said Microsoft’s general manager of Response Point, Xuedong Huang.  “Response Point SP1 will make it easy to transition from traditional analog service to the promise of digital voice services.”

Service Pack 1 for Response Point will add more functions to the system’s voice communications, making it more than a typical set of patches, according to the company. Current Response Point customers will be able to download SP1 for free, and it will be preloaded onto phone systems from Aastra Technologies, D-Link, and Quanta Computer when it becomes available, the statement said.

These new functions included in the service pack are “key features” missing from the original release, according to Kevin McLaughlin, ChannelWeb.

Microsoft’s digital voice services, or SIP trunking, is one of the new capabilities. Previous incarnations of Response Point allowed only analog lines to be connected to the public switched telephone network. After installing SP1, users can connect to the PSTN over the internet. VoIP calls will become cheaper and easier to manage, according to Microsoft.

“Small business VoIP used to be enterprise phone systems that were cut down for small businesses, but these systems were often too complex and difficult to use,” said Ben Brauer, Microsoft’s senior product manager for Response Point.

SP1 also includes click-to-call abilities and an option to view which users in an office are on the phone.

“It certainly is a phone system has some features that used to be found in medium and enterprise level VoIP environments,” said Trevor Dierdorff, president of AMNet, a Colorado Springs, Colo.-based solution provider.

Is SP1 going to be a mixed blessing, though?

“The challenge with the new connectivity option is that some people are going to experience poor call quality if they don’t set up the network correctly, and Microsoft has no way of managing or helping in that process,” said Andrew Swingler, president of Crewe Technologies, an Aliso Viejo, Calif.-based VoIP VAR.

 Brauer counters by stating that Response Point is easy enough to manage, that most companies can “avoid many of the pitfalls associated with VoIP.” He also points out that VoIP systems allow small businesses to benefit from many of the features previously only affordable to larger companies, due to VoIP’s lower costs.

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