AT&T and Microsoft announced the availability of AT&T Live Meeting, a hosted Webconferencing service that enables users to communicate and collaborate in real time with a personal computer, an Internet connection and a telephone.

This newest offering in the AT&T Collaboration portfolio builds upon the company's previously announced global strategic alliance with Microsoft, which is focused on the development, deployment and delivery of next-generation, Internet Protocol (IP)-based communications services. AT&T Live Meeting uses Microsoft Connected Services Framework, a server-based product for building and managing complex services using a service-oriented architecture and Web-services interfaces.

"The introduction of AT&T Live Meeting is a milestone in our global alliance with Microsoft," said Shawn Conroy, vice president-Product Management, AT&T. "It provides an additional choice for our customers in Web- conferencing options and allows users to communicate in a media-rich, real- time manner while strengthening their collaboration and productivity."

The foundation for AT&T Live Meeting's capabilities is the ability to broadcast visuals of any type, including presentations and commonly used document types, to remote participants in real time. With the ability to virtually share any application or document over the Internet, there are essentially no boundaries to what, when, where or with whom users can communicate. This, combined with AT&T traditional and VoIP audioconferencing services, provides customers with complete collaboration capabilities.

AT&T Live Meeting uses the capabilities of Microsoft Office Live Meeting and AT&T's award-winning set of audioconferencing services, which includes VoIP conferencing and traditional TDM-based conferencing services. AT&T Live Meeting offers a set of tools that allows users to customize the level of interaction and collaboration among meeting participants. In conjunction with AT&T Live Meeting, users can access Microsoft Office Outlook, Microsoft Office Word, Microsoft Office Excel, Microsoft Office PowerPoint, Microsoft Office Project, Microsoft Office SharePoint Server and Microsoft Office Visio.

"The launch of the new AT&T Live Meeting service marks a key step forward in our alliance to drive new converged IP-based services to businesses," said Michael O'Hara, general manager for the Communications Sector at Microsoft. "Our relationship is focused on providing greater value to our customers. Microsoft Connected Services Framework is central to that strategy, because it allows communications companies such as AT&T to bring together a range of services -- including Microsoft Office Live Meeting -- in new combinations that address target audiences and user requirements. We're excited to bring this new service to market with AT&T and look forward to working together to deliver new offerings on Connected Services Framework in the future."

AT&T Live Meeting is easy to deploy and manage for AT&T customers. No additional software or hardware needs to be installed, since anyone with Internet access, a standard browser and a telephone can participate in an AT&T teleconference, all powered by Microsoft Live Meeting -- even through firewalls. The solution is built on a security-enhanced AT&T platform, which includes features such as:

• Always-on SSL encryption, providing security-enhanced data transmission
• Network security practices and business continuity of AT&T's global IP infrastructure
• Strong password policies and 128-bit encryption
• SAS70-certified data centers
• Security-enhanced communication across firewalls

AT&T offers a large portfolio of collaboration services to enable customers to conduct productive, virtual meetings any time of the day or night and is a recognized leader in this space. Most recently, the AT&T TeleConference Services received the 2006 Customer Value Enhancement Award from the research firm Frost & Sullivan for its remarkable contribution to the North American Audio Conferencing Services Product Market.

More information on AT&T's collaboration services spanning conferencing and messaging is available at http://www.business.att.com/service_portfolio.jsp?repoid=ProductCategory&repoi tem=eb_application&serv_port=eb_application&segment=ent_biz.