Robert Faletra in CRN, talking about Microsoft and Real-Time Communication (RTC):

Microsoft ought to leverage Ozzie more or even make Groove the lead dog here. A concerted effort to articulate a product road map while leveraging Microsoft's value-added channel would be a winning combination

Personally, I'm fascinated. I see the PlaceWare acquisition as a sign that someone understands the need to [a] establish a beach-head with a focused application area (meetingware), and [b] have something with which to define the category of "realtime application server" - that has to include SIP and SIMPLE, but also have broader capabilities.

Placeware has been interesting since the start, because its heritage includes the grandaddy realtime-appserver of them all, one I spent way too much time using:

PlaceWare got its start in 1990 at Xerox Palo Alto Research Center (PARC). In its first iterations, it was a ground-breaking multi-user game known as LambdaMOO.