Microsoft's buying spree.

The article focuses on the acquisition of Microsoft Corp. with Parlano Inc., the manufacturer of MindAlign, an application for enterprise group chat which enables people to carry on topic-specific, multiparty, and instant messaging discussions. It is inferred that Parlano's group chat functionality will be added as a new feature of Office Communications Server (OCS) and Microsoft Office Communicator in 2007. It is implied that Parlano's software was used by companies in a variety of industries including financial services, call centers and technology, to conduct ongoing business-critical conversations.