MIDC develops office communicator mobile

Microsoft's India Development Centre (MIDC) has announced its involvement in an end-to-end project to develop Microsoft office communicator mobile, a unified communications client that provides information workers with a premier mobile collaboration experience through native integration of mobile applications with enterprise-grade, real-time communications tools.

Communicator mobile will extend features of Microsoft Office Live Communications Server 2005 and Microsoft Office Communicator to the Windows Mobile 2003 SE and Windows Mobile 5.0 platform, both Pocket PC Edition and Smartphone.

The product, developed completely at MIDC, was a collaborative effort between the Unified Communications Group and MIDC's centre of excellence for mobile devices.

The development process included getting feedback from usage within Microsoft, Beta users outside Microsoft, and TAP (technology adoption programme) partners. The suggestions and feedback from user groups were incorporated into the product in the early stages of the development cycle.

According to a media statement, Srini Koppolu, vice-president and managing director, MIDC, said, "Our India development centre plays an important role in contributing to future innovations at Microsoft. The release of communicator mobile is an endorsement of Microsoft's mission to innovate, energise, and support Microsoft investments for the mobile user experience."

Sudeep Bharati, director, mobile devices group, MIDC, said, "The project was conceived in the beginning of 2005, and in just over a year, we are in a position to release version 1.0 of the product."

MIDC has built a strong centre for excellence in the area of mobility with over 175 developers. Office Mobile, SQL Mobile, Visual Studio for Devices, Communicator Mobile and Connected Services Framework are some of the key pieces of this portfolio being built out of MIDC Hyderabad.