Communications Online and Live Meeting

Communications Online is available in only two tiers: Dedicated, which gives each customer dedicated server hardware and has a minimum requirement of 5,000 seats, and Standard, which uses shared server hardware and is available for organizations of all sizes. Unlike Exchange Online and SharePoint Online, no Deskless Worker tier is available. Both levels of service include the same presence, instant messaging (IM), and PC-to-PC voice and video calling features. The Dedicated level adds antivirus, archiving, and support for more clients, and customers also may purchase additional service options, such as connecting to public IM services and placing calls over the traditional telephone network.

Live Meeting is a Web conferencing service with support for up to 1,250 users. It will eventually be folded into Communications Online, but the company has provided only vague timeframes for the transition, which is to begin by the end of 2010.

Communications Online Dedicated

This tier of service enables users with Microsoft’s Communicator 2007 R2 client software to exchange IMs and publish and see one another’s presence status (e.g., available, busy, away). The service can broker voice and video calls between Communicator users, but only between two parties, and users cannot call conventional wired or mobile telephones. Dedicated customers can add the public IM connectivity (PIC) service, which enables users to securely exchange presence status and IMs with users of public IM services hosted by AOL, Microsoft, and Yahoo.