With its new ability to extend collaboration to Office productivity applications and to bridge communications among organizations, Microsoft Corp.’s Live Communications Server 2005 is a good enterprise instant messaging platform choice for a wider variety of companies.
Shipping since last month, Live Communications Server is priced at $787 for the Standard Edition and $3,154 for the Enterprise Edition, with client access licenses costing $31 each.
Live Communications Server 2005 runs only on Windows Server 2003 and requires Active Directory; the new Messenger client runs only on Windows 2000 and Windows XP. Live Communications Server supports only Messenger 5.0 and 5.1 clients.
If all of those “onlys” are OK by your organization, then this version of Live Communications Server is a worthy purchase or upgrade from the last release. Companies still running instant messaging from Exchange 5.5 will also find this a good update, provided they have or are willing to implement Active Directory.eWEEK Labs found several excellent enhancements in Live Communications Server 2005’s Messenger 5.1 client, including the ability to create federated relationships for connecting with other organizations. However, Live Communications Server’s system requirements have become more complex with the 2005 version, especially in the Enterprise Edition. Tapping all the features requires considerable administrative work during setup, and overall administration isn’t as easy as we’d like.
Read the whole review via : eWeek: Microsoft Corp. Live Communications Server 2005
