Bill Gates — live from Bill Graham Auditorium, San Francisco

Screeching music, like the sound of the Blue Angels flying overhead, the lights flicker and a guitarist comes on stage playing notes to match the jet planes.

I expect the curtain to be pulled back any moment, ala The Wizard of Oz, and a small, well-intentioned man to appear.

Sure enough, yes, it’s Bill Gates, chairman of the board.

No tie, suit, benign smile.

He’s excited to be here.

What is this all about, he asks.

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The magic of software helping us to be more productive and more creative. taking the magic of software and applying it to phone calls Gates claims is what this is all about.

Sounds sort of old school, “phone calls.”

This is a transformation of the business of the traditional PBX, says Bill, comparing the PBX to the mainframe of yesteryear.

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Moving phone calls onto the Internet, using industry standard servers we have a different way of doing things, says Gates and everyone would have to agree with that.

But competitors claim Microsoft’s PBX capabilities for business are thin, very thin.

Competitors claim call routing or any call center functionality, such as press 1 for one service and 2 for another service is beyond what Microsoft can do it in its first Unified Communications offering.

What’s Bill doing now?

Paying homage to Moore’s lawyer, a requirement for any high tech speech.

And he mentions the Altair computer as the reason why he dropped out of school all those years ago.

When he gets to something substantial about unified communications I will report back.