Ed Simnett plays a key role in developing the marketing strategies for Microsoft Corp.'s real-time communications product, Microsoft Office Live Communications Server 2003. As lead product manager for the Real-Time Messaging and Platform Group in the Real-Time Collaboration Business Unit, Simnett is responsible for defining how Live Communications Server, an instant-messaging solution and real-time communications platform for businesses, is positioned for industry analysts and customers, and what the customer and industry requirements will be for the next generation of the product. He also is responsible for developing strategic industry partnerships that will foster a robust ecosystem of service providers and hardware and software vendors around the product.

Simnett is passionate about the evolution of instant messaging (IM) and real-time communications (RTC), and believes that in the near future people will feel as comfortable using IM and RTC to get their jobs done as they do using e-mail or the telephone today. His strategic vision has played a key role in successfully positioning the prerelease of Live Communications Server as a leader in the IM and RTC space, and in successfully launching Reuters Messaging, a hosted IM service based on Live Communications Server helps investment banks, institutions and hedge funds communicate more effectively.

Before joining Microsoft in October 2001, Simnett was vice president of business development and product marketing at TrulyGlobal Inc., where he helped deliver a groundbreaking unified communications service targeted to global telecommunications companies. Before that he was head of business planning at ePostings.com, a startup focused on messaging infrastructure, and vice president of business development at deltathree Inc., an Internet telephony service provider. Before focusing on the communications industry, Simnett was senior associate at Barents Group LLC, a provider of financial and economic advisory services in emerging markets and developing countries, where he focused his efforts on privatizing companies in the former Soviet Union and Eastern Europe.

Simnett holds an MBA from Harvard University, where he was a Baker Scholar, and an undergraduate degree in jurisprudence from the University of Oxford.

He is an accomplished photographer and a keen game theorist, and has an avid interest in travel, having visited more than 50 countries.