INDIAN BEHIND MICROSOFT'S NEW AGE COMMUNICATION TOOL

By Anand Parthasarathy, The Hindu, March 8, 2005

A new communication tool to be formally announced by Microsoft
on Tuesday - the latest addition to its Office'' suite - will integrate
instant messaging, voice and video with the telephone. Codenamed
Istanbul,'' it is expected to do for instant - that is, real time spoken
and visual - communication, what Outlook'' does for e-mail.

And the key technologist behind this radical new way for communicating
over the Internet, is Anoop Gupta, a graduate from the Indian Institute of
Technology, Delhi who is currently Microsoft's corporate vice-president of
the Real-Time Collaboration Business Unit.

A PhD from Carnegie Mellon University, Dr. Gupta was Associate Professor
of Computer Science, for 11 years at Stanford University (U.S.), and then
started his own company, VXtreme, which provided the technology to stream
audio-visual content to virtual' classrooms. When Microsoft acquired the
company in 1997, Dr. Gupta joined as technology assistant to Bill Gates,
before he took charge of the Real Time Collaboration Unit and guided the
research that created Istanbul.'' It represents a milestone by integrating
various modes of communications in one unified desktop experience,'' he
says.

While Istanbul has been circulated to beta testers since October last, the
global launch is expected to be announced on March 8 during a
videoconference addressed by Mr. Gates as part of the VON Spring
Conference'' - a bi- annual gathering of the Internet Telephony community
that opened today at San Jose.

The new tool seem targeted initially, at agencies, who can now host
services to corporates, which combine regular telephones with
Internet-based instant messages and video conferencing. But since
Istanbul'' would be a part of Microsoft's Office suite, it is probably
also aimed cannily, at lay PC users, offering them a seamless solution
that integrates all possible ways of talking to friends and relatives in
real time, over the Internet, even while seeing them live.''