Unified Communications Group - the merging of Exchange and Real Time collaborations.
There's been quite a lot of talk in the press and the blogosphere since the announcement on Monday that the Real Time Collaboration group and the Exchange team were going to merge into the UGC. I think that this is a really good idea - and gives the whole collaboration ethos a new dimension with VOIP, Unified messaging, mails and presence all rolled in to one development group. Why do we lget voicemails, followed by emails asking you if you actually got the initial voicemail. Seems a bit daft to me. But we're in the age of instant communications now. How many people do you see walking down the street holding their phone, not daring to miss a message / sms / email / call? Even on the beach (not that its beach weather at the moment in the UK, but hey, I can dream), you see people with hardly anything on, clutching their phone or making calls.
We need to be instantly in touch wherever we are. So the Real Time collaboration group's merger is a logical and interesting step. Will be very interesting to see what goes in to the post Exchange 12 product suite. Oh to be a fly on the wall in that team. That'd be most interesting...