Microsoft Response Point: A phone system for the small business

Sometimes, small business seems to be neglected in many offerings that Microsoft provides. True, the Small Business Server is an attempt to fill those needs, and you may want to take note of the two 2008 items set for a release later this year. But at times, there is needless complexity in these solutions, and they show a lack of insight into the small-business world, in which companies need to focus on their core competencies, not the nitty-gritty of technology.

So it was interesting to take note of a product that has some of the high-end features of Microsoft Unified Communications Server (UCS), but without the price tag and the complexity.

Response Point, an alternative to traditional PBX solutions, is an in-house phone system that includes a base station and “traditional looking” phones with Windows XP Embedded (XPe) technology. You can add up to 50 phones, and easily bring on or remove users. InfoWorld recently reviewed the product.

One point made in our review is that certain features are missing, such as presence. Personally, I don’t see this as such a negative. True, the concept of “presence” seems to have been in every communication tool since IM or ICQ — but so has the concept of presence evasion. I usually set my Skype to invisible to avoid unnecessary calls. However, the lack of this feature is a minus for those in a small business who rely on it heavily.

From a technical perspective, the base station (which can currently come from one of three different vendors: Quanta, D-Link, and Aastra) acts as a router between your external phone line and internal network. One quite intuitive application can be installed for managing the addition and configuration of new users, and the phones can be easily plugged into an Ethernet connection. Truly, anyone in your office who can set up a home network has the skills to establish a Response Point system. The system is VoIP based and uses the SIP protocol, which is becoming increasingly more utilized in Microsoft offerings (case in point: Communications Server).

On the Response Point site, you’ll find one demonstration that shows an impressive feature for small businesses: the automated assistant, which can handle speech recognition and voice navigation to allow for call forwarding and voice mail. It even has the ability to offer simple information, such as your company’s fax number. In addition, there’s a Response Point directory, which can also work directly with Outlook contacts.

Pricing from the vendors mentioned above depends on the number of phone units you need, but a starter package with the base kit and five phones goes for roughly $2,500, with additional phones running about $150 each. What you won’t have to purchase are the heavy Microsoft servers that allow for Active Directory, Exchange, and so forth.

Apparently this model is working for the Response Point team; it’s gotten such positive feedback that the group is hiring and looking for others interested in “small business telephony.”

Caution: Response Point is an interesting product and one worth investigating, but small businesses need to do just that: investigate. There are other solutions on the market, many that have a greater level of maturity (being around for longer than a year or version 1.0), such as TalkSwitch. In fact, Kevin Selkowitz, a small-business consultant and blogger from Seattle, paired up Response Point and TalkSwitch and gave his confidence over to — well, read the comparison to find out.