The European Acquisition

Wednesday, Microsoft announced its intent to acquire Media-streams.com. Media-streams.com is a 23-person firm with a set of business applications offering VoIP. Just like Skype, this company is also in Europe, with the headquarters Zurich, Switzerland.

The applications offered by Media-streams.com have been designed to target business; Microsoft plans to link the software to its corporate instant message system and Office productivity applications. This feature set will be available in Communicator and Office 12.

On Tuesday, Microsoft showed off the ability to make VoIP calls from Windows Live Messenger, an application going into beta in December.

It is great to see that Microsoft is focusing on bringing VoIP to their products. I have used VoIP at home for a long time and love it. The quality is good and you can't beat the price. This acquisition is also in line with Microsoft’s investment practices...a small company with great potential to extend existing product offerings.