Microsoft Sees Billion Users for Phone, Web Programs

Microsoft vying with Cisco Systems for business-phone customers, predicts more than a billion people will use software that combines Internet-calling features with messaging and video within three years.

Microsoft has more than 100 million customers making calls using its Office software, Gurdeep Singh Pall, vice president of the company's Unified Communications group, said in an interview.

Microsoft will release a new version of software for Internet telephony and corporate instant messaging this year, said Pall, who speaks today at a conference in Orlando, Florida. That program, Microsoft's Office Communications Server, increased sales by more than 50 percent in the year ended June 30. The software competes with products from companies like Cisco and Avaya Inc. in a market that may grow more than fivefold to $14.5 billion in 2015, according to an estimate from Forrester Research Inc.