LCS 2005: Live Meeting is not Live Communications Server 2005

I received a couple questions originating from my earlier post… so to clarify, the Live Meeting Service, and Live Communications Server 2005 (LCS 2005) products are not the same thing. Specifically, LCS 2005 is not a back-office alternative to the hosted Live Meeting Service.

Live Meeting is a hosted service, provided by Microsoft, which provides easy-to-use conferencing and collaboration tools. Despite some confusion to the contrary, LCS 2005 is not a back-office version of Live Meeting that you can install on a server. LCS 2005 is an enterprise instant messaging solution, which integrates with Office Communicator and/or Windows Messenger 5.1 products. While LCS 2005 does have collaboration tools, and remote-desktop/remote-assistance style desktop sharing, it’s more akin to Netmeeting in terms of features and limitations, than Live Meeting.

Is LCS 2005 useful? You bet – but as an IM platform.

For conferencing, especially conferencing involving multiple people, use Live Meeting.