Microsoft Corp. today announced the release to manufacturing (RTM) of Microsoft� Office Live Communications Server 2005. Part of the Microsoft Office System, Live Communications Server 2005, available for the first time in both Standard and Enterprise Editions, enables organizations to extend the benefits of enterprise instant messaging and presence awareness to remote business partners, customers, co-workers and suppliers, empowering them to quickly find and communicate with each other and ultimately make better decisions more quickly.

"The release to manufacturing of Live Communications Server 2005 marks an important milestone in delivering on our vision for extending the value of Microsoft Office System to encompass rich real-time collaboration capabilities, empowering people to work together more effectively," said Anoop Gupta, corporate vice president of Real-Time Collaboration at Microsoft. "This is a powerful upgrade to our standards-based enterprise instant messaging platform and delivers native federation capabilities, instant messaging and presence integration with the security and scalability requirements that are so critical for our enterprise customers."