Speech Server 2007, originally planned as a stand-alone product, will be folded into Communications Server 2007—the follow-on to Live Communications Server 2005, which is due to ship in the second quarter of 2007. Merging the servers could make it easier for developers to build and IT managers to deploy interactive voice response (IVR) applications, which would often use both technologies. However, the effect on pricing and licensing is not yet known.

Speech Server is a platform for building IVR applications, which allow users to make choices by speaking or pressing numbers on a telephone keypad and to retrieve information in the form of prerecorded messages and prompts or computer-generated speech. Today, Live Communications Server supports instant messaging, presence, and Voice over IP (VoIP), but lacks any IVR functions.

IVR applications are particularly valuable in automating customer-service call centers, which could also benefit from the Voice over IP functions of Communications Server. For example a call center might use Speech Server to obtain information from a customer and then route the call to the next qualified operator based on presence information from Communications Server. Such solutions will probably require less integration work when built on Communications Server alone than they would require on Speech Server and Communications Server separately.

However, solutions built on Communications Server plus Speech Server could be more costly to license than those built on Speech Server alone. Most importantly, Communications Server requires client access licenses (CALs) for each user, and Speech Server uses per-processor pricing. This difference could lead to higher license costs for organizations with large numbers of users. However, Microsoft has not yet announced pricing for Communications Server 2007 or specified how Speech Server customers will be able to migrate to it.

Speech Server 2007 is described in "Speech Server 2007 En Route" on page 17 of the May 2006 Update.

Live Communications Server 2005, the predecessor to Communications Server, is described in "LCS 2005 Takes Corporate IM Beyond the Firewall" on page 3 of the Jan. 2005 Update.

The home page for Microsoft's communication products is www.microsoft.com/uc/default.mspx.