Microsoft Lync. What is it and is it right for your organization?

Microsoft Lync. What is it and is it right for your organization?
February 26^th, 2011
Matthew Nikravesh – brightstack, LLC

The next generation in business unified communications is here, Microsoft Lync. Lync formerly known as Office Communications Server (OCS) transforms communications by making it more collaborative, engaging, and accessible from anywhere. In addition Lync is highly secure and reliable that work with existing tools and infrastructure that your organization may already have.

With Lync you can control costs, improve productivity & efficiencies, support your mobile workforce, offer better response to your customers all while maintaining regulatory compliance. Lync delivers a fully baked solution from presence, instant messaging, conferencing and full voice capabilities. Lync does all of this through a single easy to use interface that is consistent across all platforms such as PC, Mobile Devices, and internet browsers. Administrators of the Lync infrastructure benefit from a signle management interface so they days of multiple management interfaces are gone.

Lync brings many new features and functionality to table including but not limited to:

Easy Access to presence through the Microsoft Lynch 2010 Client for in office workers and through the mobile client/browser client for your road warriors.

Consistent Contact Lists between Lynch and all Microsoft Office Applications

Internal Skill Based Search when integrated with SharePoint

Conference & Collaborate more efficiently not only with voice communications but also with the ability to share desktop and applications.

One Click Meeting Scheduling though Microsoft Outlook

Vendor agnostic IP and USB devices that give you the ability to work at home, in the office, or on the road

Quality of Service (QoS) Management

Support of High Availability (HA) for resiliency and survivability

Is Lync the next big this in business communications? I believe so. Not only has Microsoft invested a lot of time and money on the 3^rd version of their Unified Communication (UC) platform but they have realized that organizations are not willing to toss out their current phone systems so they have made 3 deployment options available

Use Lync for everything which mean most likely to replace your entire PBX and all your phones

Use Lync in addition to your current phone system in tandem

Use Lync only for non-voice productivity tools such as conferencing, collaboration and IM.

Are you interested in Lync? Can your organization benefit from Lync?  Contact Matthew Nikravesh from brightstack at matthew@brightstack.com or at 212.810.2731 to find out if your organization can benefit from the many advantages of Lync. In addition brightstack can assist with setting up a proof of concept for your organization and even integrating it with your legacy phone system if you qualify.