Sorry, Bill.

While I sense - from my trusty SiteMeter stats - that Bill Gates probably didn't read my post last week venting my lack of enthusiasm for his pending OCS launch, I should apologize just the same. My said lack of excitement led me to not attend his keynote, but after calls from people in the audience, I chose to catch the whole affair online.

I don't pretend to have the technical skills nor the MSFT experience to agree or disagree with all those who suggest the OCS dream needs a few cycles before stabilizing. But I can say that it shows well. For those of you who chose only to read the reviews and not watch the video of the OCS launch, time to admit poor judgment. The video is worth the one hour of your life. After all, it probably took Bill and his team the better part of 10 years to get it ready.

The PBX is not dead, though. It will be dead when the people who sell it - as in those feet on the street - can no longer retire quota with it. In the in term, it lives. And pretty well, too.

Back to OCS. Man does it demo well (except for the speech-rec part with 20,000 people in a room). How would you like to click and drag 8 names from your address book into on-screen box and have them all called into a conference call? Sounds simple enough but is a not a feature the masses have yet to enjoy. This, and many other intersections between voice and Office applications, is what we have to look forward to. If we can get OCS installed and up and running.

My only real beef - it's not hosted yet. It will come. So Bill says.