How far we’ve come: reflecting on Microsoft’s 2010 collaboration vision video from 2005

It might be the latest hit single from Matchbox Twenty, but in anticipation of the impending (official) reveal of Microsoft Office 2010, I thought it would be fitting to take a moment to reflect on what was envisioned of collaboration technology in 2010 by no other than Microsoft themselves almost half a decade ago in 2005.

Surprisingly, Microsoft has been able to realize many of the concepts illustrated. For example, Office Communicator and an Exchange server allows for a unified communications experience with support for availability information. It just so happens Exchange 2010 enables voicemail messages to be automatically transcribed too.

Furthermore, Windows 7 with DirectAccess allows remote access of internal corporate resources without VPN software. The Microsoft Roundtable is an amazing product too and makes video conferencing a breeze. The only thing that doesn’t appear entirely fulfilled yet is the user experience, although we’re definitely making strides if you look at WPF-powered software such as the Lawson Smart Client.

If this blog is still around in 10 years, I’ll be sure to remind everyone of Microsoft’s 2019 vision too. 🙂

13 insightful thoughts

  1. Is it a rule that all of these Microsoft videos have to be painful to watch? Please let the Zune team handle your marketing from now on!

  2. Meh, imo, it’s still far far away.
    Yes we might have solutions for each, but it’s still so disjointed.
    Hell, WM 6.5 and Win7 are hardly integrated at all.
    Sure there’s some 3rd party Bluetooth software that will have a shot at it, but it’s still all so half done.

  3. These technologies exist alright, but they’re not integrated. If you wanted to do this, you could spend years in configuration dialogs.

  4. alirobe, I agree with you. I saw this video and couldn’t help but think of all the Longhorn stuff. Hell, the UI in most of the videos is quite obviously longhorn (with the bluish buttons and light blue menu backgrounds). And I do enjoy how most of the dropped concepts from Longhorn have shown back up in some way or another on Windows 7 (minus WinFS).

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