PlaceWare’s online conferencing service has a new name – Microsoft Office Live Meeting. But beyond that, little else is new.

Microsoft released the renamed conferencing product with much fanfare last week (Sept. 15) via an online conference from atop the left field wall in Boston’s Fenway Park.

The idea behind the acquisition was to eventually integrate the conferencing ware with the rest of Microsoft’s Office product line. So far, Microsoft has added support for a native Windows client and integration with Outlook to schedule conferences. 

But the real changes won’t be seen for six months or more. That’s when Microsoft plans to integrate Live Meeting with Windows Messenger, the company’s instant messaging client. And in 12 months, it hopes to fully integrate Live Meeting with Live Communications Server, its IM presence server set to ship with Office 2003 next month.

Eventually, users should be able to run it on an server internally, but for now, it remains a hosted service, just as it was under the PlaceWare name. Users access the service via their browser, and then, just using their phone and a PC-based Internet connection, they can conduct real-time meetings, easing collaboration among employees, business partners or any geographically dispersed business team.

For more on Live Meeting, and the PlaceWare technology, go to Microsoft’s Live Meeting homepage here.