OCS PIC changes coming

From the MS OCS Team blog comes this announcement:

• Starting October 1, 2009, the following licensing changes will be made:
  A PIC License will no longer be required for federation with American Online (AOL). Customers qualify for federation with AOL if they have Office Communications Server 2007 R2 Standard CAL or active Software Assurance on their current LCS/OCS license.
• Customers who want Yahoo! federation will continue to purchase PIC licenses. The price of PIC will be reduced by 50%, effective October 1, 2009, to reflect this change.
• New XMPP Gateway released that will allow presence and two party IM with Jabber based services, most notably, Google Talk

This also comes on the heels of their June announcement that Windows Live did not require a PIC license. 2009 has been a good year for federation to public instant messaging platforms!