Microsoft plans to acquire PlaceWare, a provider of Web conferencing services. The PlaceWare service is aimed at businesses wishing to conduct real-time, interactive presentations and meetings over the Internet. The service currently supports large-scale meetings with up to thousands of attendees. Financial terms were not disclosed. Microsoft said it intends to make PlaceWare a part of its new Real Time Collaboration Group, which will offer online business communication tools and services. The newly formed group will be led by Anoop Gupta, who has been part of Microsoft Research for five years and has recently been serving as Bill Gates’ technical advisor.
http://www.microsoft.com
http://www.placeware.com
- PlaceWare got its start in 1990 at Xerox Palo Alto Research Center (PARC) initially as a multi-user game known as LambdaMOO. The technology later became the foundation for a collaborative computing system for the U.S. Department of Defense.