Just today I got an alert from Harry Brelsford over at SMBNation that Microsoft Response Point is officially dead. The sole remaining employee in the Response Point group, John Frederickson in an article by CRN, said "To continue to support the needs of the small business community, we expect to consolidate our efforts and offerings in this space around Microsoft Office Communications Server (OCS)," Frederickson said in the post.
I, of course, am very interested in hearing the technical difficiencies that caused Microsoft end of life Response Point. Frederickson was very clear (and I quote from Harry's article) "The change in telecomm technology came upon us much faster than we predicted. It's gone hosted and mobile." Frederiksen added. "These changes would have required extensive additional investments in rearchitecting Response Point when OCS is already well down that road."
"It's gone hosted and mobile." Frederiksen added
At one time I would have laughed at OCS (aka Microsoft Communication Server) taking RP's place, but after having worked with hosted OCS--I have entirely changed my mind. Yes, at the moment the configuration is very heavy for OCS, on-premise setup. But Microsoft could offer OCS in 2 flavors that would be SMB PBX changer: A simplified OCS Small Business Edition or Hosted OCS with Enterprise Voice.
Another Windows PBX player, pbxnsip, is ideally suited to fill in this gap as well. pbxnsip has been optimizing it's Windows-base PBX offering for the cloud and hosted environments for some time. The pbxnsip Phonesystem has a very mature web based admin & user portal, an entirely web-based Attendent console, has mature, multi-tenant capabilities and has been providing telco's as well as SMB's with hosted pbx for some time. pbxnsip runs on-premise or in the cloud equally well. pbxnsip can also work with re-commissioned Aastra RP phone handsets allowing the bulk of an RP deployment to be re-used.
Also you may have interest in my Windows-based PBX versus Response Point Comparison Report I did a little while ago. Click Here to get it emailed to you.
Wow, this industry sure doesn't stand still!
Harry Brelsford's Article Covering RP End:
CRN Article Covering the RP Story:
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