Last month (I.e. May 2007) Microsoft announced Expression Suit and Silverlight, which will be competing (most probably) with Adobe’s creative suite and Flash. Though I still noticed flash in Microsoft’s site :P. Microsoft is quietly putting the moves on Adobe’s other popular consumer technology, the Portable Document Format (PDF). XML Paper Specification, or XPS — Microsoft’s new rival to PDF — the Redmond company is making the software for free to both consumers and pros.

The rivalry didn’t stop there. Adobe’s Acrobat Connect Professional, the state of the art hosted Web conferencing service is the next target of MS. Live Meeting 2007, Microsoft’s updated hosted Web conferencing service, will be available this fall.

With this latest update, now Live Meeting shares more common code with its blood-brother, Office Communications Server 2007, which is in beta now and expected to RTM this summer and be broadly available in the fall.

Live Meeting has its heredity in Placeware, which Microsoft acquired in 2003. While majority part of Placeware’s technology was in Java and UNIX, the bulk of the current code base will now be Microsoft-centric.

New perks of Live Meeting:

• 360-degree video when used with Microsoft’s upcoming Office RoundTable 2007, a commercial version of RingCam, and its in-the-round videoconferencing camera. 
• Ability to handle rich integrated media including Windows Media Format, Adobe Flash.
• Allow use of mixed telephony devices on one call, for example one persona using VOIP, other traditional phone, other mobile device.
• This new version also offers a wider variety of meeting types from easy-to-set up ad hoc conferences between a handful of users up to very large training and events.

According to Microsoft’s website soon there will be APIs available to facilitate the funnelling of that information into learning management systems.

The battle for VoIP dominance got hotter, since Cisco’s acquisition of Webex a few months ago. Webex is the market leader in hosted Web conferencing. At least for now Cisco and Microsoft are competing more directly in various parts of the unified communications dominion than Adobe.

Hard to compare between Microsoft’s Live meeting vs. Adobe’s Acrobat Connect Professional, without seeing the actual Live meeting in action. Adobe’s Acrobat Connect Professional is an excellent cutting edge communication and collaboration solution with no software restrictions. On the other hand Microsoft have a tendency to limit its solution within its own realm, very best example is Office Live. Microsoft has to overcome this first if it’s really wants to take the big bite out of web conferencing arena.

And lastly Live meeting pricing looks way too much comparing to other similar services, :) well may be user won’t mind paying $3000 annual fee/one time set-up fee just for the name Microsoft.

Upcoming Software Review: Adobe Acrobat Connect Professional.