“It’s going to be a battle” says Gartner business analyst Bob Hafner speaking of the upcoming struggle over Internet communications. Both Microsoft and Cisco have vested interest in the Internet future of telecomm. Microsoft is the newcomer believing that its software technologies will be the central focus in the new age of IP communications. Cisco and other telecomm hardware companies like Siemens and Alcatel have other ideas.

Cisco has been a leader in Internet communications for years dealing in enterprise capacity routers and high volume Internet traffic switches. Cisco has designs on a unified business communications solution for which it's made acquisitions. Picking up smaller niche communications companies that have established technologies in everything from messaging to mobile voice comm security. Early renditions of Cisco’s own unified business communications are already in use in offices across North America. Even now I sit in an office staring at a Cisco IP Phone. It’s the same phone used by the fictional branch of the US Department of Defense called CTU on the TV show 24. I can even set it for that distinctive ringtone and answer the phone in a curt - “Robson ... yes, I need the location of the bomb and I haven't got much time".

Microsoft has Office Communications Server poised to become the “Outlook” of the workplace telephone. Clearly a clash of industry titans is brewing. But will Microsoft be a little too late into the fray? The big push at Microsoft’s hardware developer conference was for the IP business phones it’s going to use to muscle its way into a new market.