Microsoft focuses on software in network planning

Microsoft has released a new TV platform for advertising, Mediaroom, but the product won’t actually be available until June of 2009 according to sources. The release marks a major initiative by Microsoft to become the platform provider for a wide variety of service components in both emerging services like video and older services like voice. Microsoft is seeing the overall industry trend toward a software focus in network planning, a shift that arises from the commoditization of access and transport that the Internet has created. We believe that there will be a war between IT players like HP, IBM, and Microsoft and network players like Cisco for dominance in the network platform software space.