Originally published December 1 2005
Microsoft to buy Swiss VoIP company
by Mike Adams, the Health Ranger, NaturalNews Editor
The company named "media-streams" makes VoIP software that already works with Microsoft's Outlook Express. Microsoft also owns Teleo, a San Francisco-based VoIP company.
The company, which is the world's largest software maker, said on Thursday that it intended to integrate technology developed by Zurich-based media-streams into its Office software.
Neither company would disclose the purchase price of media-streams, which is a private company employing 23 people in Zurich.
Microsoft said media-streams' technology would eventually enable it to offer software that allows users to host teleconferences for people in different locations by routing calls through the internet.
The Swiss company makes so-called voice-over-IP (VoIP) software, which already works with Microsoft's email program, Outlook Express.
"We are acquiring media-streams for its technology and the talent of its teams," Microsoft's director of VoIP strategies, Ed Wadbrook, told swissinfo.
Media-streams' CEO and co-founder, Erich Gebhardt, told swissinfo the firm had not been actively seeking a buyer, and declined to comment on whether he had received any counter-bids.
VoIP is an increasingly popular application because, by routing phone calls over the internet, it bypasses fixed networks and incumbent telephone service providers, such as Swisscom, dramatically reducing prices.
Because VoIP phone calls are carried over internet networks rather than circuits they are also easier to integrate into software systems.
The two firms have been working together since 2003, with representatives from both selling to Microsoft customers in the European, Middle East, and Asian markets since 2003.
In other words, it creates demand for Microsoft's products, which helps the United States company maintain its dominance as the industry standard among corporate PC users.
Media-streams was founded in 2002 by a team of engineers who had been working on VoIP systems for Siemens Switzerland.
In an interview in 2002, Gebhardt said the Siemens PBX group in Munich was "unsupportive" of the VoIP development and that this was the reason he decided to break away and create his own company.
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