At Microsoft’s annual TechEd conference, the company unveiled the 2007 release of Microsoft Office Live Meeting, a new version designed to dramatically improve online meetings, events and training. New capabilities include a redesigned user interface and an integrated collaboration experience as well as support for live video, VoIP and rich media.

Scheduled for availability in fall 2007, the new version of Office Live Meeting will make it easier for organizations of all sizes to experience the benefits of Web conferencing, whether people are conducting simple ad-hoc collaboration sessions, formal Web-based meetings, advanced online training or large communication events.

The enhancements included in the 2007 release of Microsoft Office Live Meeting resulted from more than 10 years of Web conferencing operating experience and customer feedback.

The 2007 release of Microsoft Office Live Meeting helps organizations better connect internally with employees and externally with customers and partners through these features:

• A redesigned and simplified user interface that helps conferencing participants remain focused on core content
• Improved training and event features that give presenters the ability to offer handouts, public class and event listings, and advanced testing and grading
• High-fidelity shared and local recording capabilities that give organizations the power to archive a Live Meeting session for playback

The 2007 release also supports multiple communication channels to provide an engaging experience:

• Two-way phone or VoIP offers participants a choice for integrating conference audio
• Embedded flash, video and audio files help presenters deliver rich content to conferencing participants
• Live webcam video and 360-degree panoramic video with the Microsoft RoundTable system offers a virtual experience, bringing the active speaker to participants

In addition, it delivers enterprise-class reliability and security based on new virus scanning capability using Microsoft Forefront technologies.

For organizations seeking a conferencing solution that is deployed and managed on-premise, Microsoft will also offer conferencing capabilities — built on the same conferencing technology as those in the 2007 release of Office Live Meeting — in the upcoming release of Microsoft Office Communications Server 2007, now in public beta. This software-plus-services approach gives conferencing users a consistent user experience whether using the hosted Office Live Meeting service or Office Communications Server conferencing.

The 2007 release of Microsoft Office Live Meeting and the conferencing capabilities in Office Communications Server 2007 are integral components of Microsoft’s unified communications offering. Both conferencing solutions enable businesses to connect with and engage audiences of all sizes through a reliable enterprise-class collaboration solution and to help meet the challenges they face in today’s increasingly dynamic and distributed work environment.

Customers can access video demonstrations of Microsoft Office Live Meeting 2007 and materials about other products such as Microsoft Office Communications Server 2007 at http://www.microsoft.com/uc. Current Office Live Meeting customers can also register on the site for a private preview of Microsoft Office Live Meeting 2007, which will be available later this month.