Coming Soon: Microsoft OCS 14 App Store

By the end of this year, expect to see an App Store for Microsoft Office Communications Server 14, Microsoft’s unified communications system. But here’s the twist: Microsoft isn’t developing the app store. This particular online store will be launched by a channel partner. Here’s the scoop.

Who’s behind the project? Evangelyze Communications, a two-year-old OCS channel partner that develops unified communications systems for schools. Joe Schurman, CEO of Evangelyze, says his company already is profitable, and some Evangelyze solutions generate 80-percent margins in the OCS market. How’s that? Instead of simply reselling OCS, Evangelyze is writing unified communications applications that wrap around OCS.

Next up, Evangelyze plans to launch some sort of App Store for OCS 14 software developers. Schurman says the App Store is expected to arrive before the close of 2010. Evangelyze is meeting with potential App Store partners at the Microsoft Worldwide Partner Conference 2010 (WPC10) this week in Washington, D.C.

Schurman is no stranger to the unified communications market. Before launching Evangelyze Communications, he was involved SMB VoIP research at Microsoft.

Schurman was one of six partners to participate in an OCS panel discussion today at WPC10. Much of the panel described how OCS 14 APIs (application programming interfaces) give Microsoft partners an alleged advantage over rival unified communications platforms. The VAR Guy will be back soon with more highlights from the panel.

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