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CHICAGO--AT&T and Microsoft today announced an expansive five-year agreement to develop and deploy IP communications services globally, leveraging AT&T’s worldwide IP backbone and Microsoft’s Connect Services Framework platform.

AT&T said it would make the Microsoft framework the centerpiece of its services-oriented architecture, creating a .NET-based platform with common Web interfaces, allowing virtually any application created by Microsoft’s development community to integrate easily back into AT&T’s back office systems. The idea, said AT&T chairman and CEO David Dorman, is to present enterprises with an integrated portfolio of IP services under a globally proven and constantly evolving platform.

“It moves to a new industry level AT&T’s intent to deliver to businesses worldwide the promised vision of converged IP-driven services via the world’s leading global network,” Dorman said in a statement. “As global commerce increasingly relies on the networked enterprise to move business forward, its significance can’t be overstated.”

Perhaps the most surprising part of the partnership is its scope, which begins with plans to push VoIP services internationally, but expands into messaging, videoconferencing, hosted collaboration and other enterprise applications over its five-year lifespan. SBC’s acquisition of AT&T is still pending, calling into question the future of the world’s former leading communications provider. AT&T Vice President of Business Strategy and Development Ed Shepcaro, however, said that the partnership would not interfere with any future merger plans.

“First, we’re [still] operating as AT&T,” Shepcaro said. “Second, we see it as being very synergistic with SBC. … We don’t think it’s inconsistent with their vision at all.”

Acquisition issues aside, Microsoft’s selection of AT&T certainly gives the software giant reach. AT&T’s IP network extends to almost 150 countries globally and counts among its customers most of the Fortune 1000. On the opposite side of the coin, Microsoft is one of the world’s premier software developers, its Office and other business software penetrating far into the enterprise.

The companies said they would begin their collaboration by adapting AT&T’s VoIP services for Microsoft’s framework, allowing enterprises and third-party developers to plug the IP telephony application directly into their products. The two companies will further work together to build new applications riding on the platform.