Microsoft and NEC said on Wednesday they have reached a cross-licensing agreement to share patents and would expand their computer server ties to include next-generation equipment.

Microsoft, the world's largest software maker, and NEC, the largest supplier of personal computers and servers in the Japanese market, also announced that they would cooperate in the enterprise networking business.

The expanded collaborative initiatives will take affect in the following 5 areas.

Enterprise networking
Enhanced integration between NEC's UNIVERGE SV7000 IP telephony servers and Microsoft's real-time communications platform, Microsoft Office Live Communications Server 2005. NEC plans to expand this solution globally, and to that end Microsoft will provide NEC with support in marketing.

Technical cooperation to develop technologies for improving the quality of VoIP and video.

Next-generation high reliability, high performance servers
Microsoft cooperation will include functional aspects of its Windows Server OS in order to realize high reliability and high performance in joint development of NEC's and Unisys's high-end servers as well as NEC's and Stratus' next-generation ft (fault tolerant) servers.

HPC servers
NEC and Microsoft will collaborate to integrate Microsoft Windows Compute Cluster Server 2003, Microsoft's HPC operating system under development, and the Global File System (GFS), NEC's file system that enables high-speed transfer of large volumes of data.

Patent Cross Licensing
NEC and Microsoft both develop innovative technologies that are advancing IT/network integration, multimedia and other technologies, for which they have taken out many patents. They have concluded a broad-spectrum patent cross-licensing agreement to promote faster technology development.

Collaboration in Japan
.NET Solution: NEC will expand utilization of Microsoft's .NET system infrastructure in its business packages. The first outcome of this collaboration will be the development and delivery of .NET-supported package software for local governments.

Media Center PC: NEC is positioning Media Center PCs running Microsoft Windows XP Media Center Edition (MCE) in the center of its consumer PC products lineup and is continuing to expand joint sales promotion activities with Microsoft.

Through these initiatives, NEC is pursuing its global strategy and is expanding its IT/network integration solutions globally with the support of Microsoft. This is being promoted especially in Europe through NEC Philips Unified Solutions established jointly with Royal Philips Electronics.