Microsoft's upcoming unified communications products will put the company on a collision course with some of its long-time networking partners such as Avaya and Cisco.

Microsoft unveiled its unified communications road map at a company event in San Francisco on Monday.

The company plans to enable users to share presence information and guide communications to the most appropriate device by adding capabilities to their existing devices.

Networking providers have been pushing so-called internet protocol based private branch exchanges (IP-PBXs), in-office phone centrals using standard networking technologies.

Microsoft seeks to offer largely the same functionality, but will use servers rather than a dedicated device such as a PBX.

"I do not see how [Microsoft] will go around competing with Cisco and Avaya, " said Brian Riggs, a principal analyst for enterprise telephony at Current Analysis. 

Microsoft touted the PBX makers as partners, but in a question and answer session following the presentation, Jeff Raikes, president of Microsoft's Business Division, admitted that the upcoming offerings will compete.

"It is probably true that [enterprises] may think of themselves as not actually purchasing a PBX but adding a kind of unified communications software platform to their server platform," he said.

By offering an alternative in for unified communications, Microsoft is making it even more complicated for IT managers to pick an IP-based communications platform, claimed Riggs.

"The forward thinking CIO needs to make a very complicated decision now," Riggs told vnunet.com. "The fact that Microsoft is encroaching on the voice communications market is complicating the VoIP migration path for businesses."