Wednesday, August 22, 2012

Microsoft Lync - Liking it so far

Here at Veracity Tech we are currently testing the new Microsoft Lync product.  What is Lync?  It is the latest version of a unified communication solution.  This means it includes, Instant Messaging, Voice, Video, Screen Sharing, App Sharing and whiteboard.  There is a lot to be said about Microsoft Office 365 and not all of it good but one truly attractive characteristic is that they are connecting local resources like Exchange server with cloud based resources like Office 365.  Practically speaking this means that I can have a local mail server like Exchange and purchase cloud seats of Lync and they will work together as seamlessly as if I had purchased all the licenses for my local server.  So...we rolled out cloud based Lync seats to our local Exchange server and it is working great!.  Well...I guess the potential down side is that you could spend time and money setting up synchronization between your cloud and local resources and then when you wanted to change it you'd have to spend a bunch more time on configuration.  So, it makes sense to spend the time up front testing the product to see how feasible it is for your business and then use the license that makes the most sense for your company from a cost and deployment perspective.

What I love about the product is that it fits with the Microsoft platform so many of my customers are already using.  Up until now a lot of companies have been forced to start by using Skype (which is now owned by Microsoft) and set up users individually.  Which can be a pain if you have a lot of users.  This has been the way that a lot of people have their first exposure to voice and video simultaneously.  Now we can wrap voice video and text all into the Exchange/Outlook platform that most people are already using in a business setting.  The product works well and it is intuitive to set up a call or share a desktop.  It integrates nicely with the calendar.  I'm sure there will be some who have complaints.  after all its part of the fun of new products in the IT business.  You get to complain and then the manufacturers make them better.  I hope people have a chance to try this product out.  Its easy to order a few seats and pay on a monthly basis.

Feel free to contact me at Veracity if you have questions.

Best Regards,
Peter H. Zubert 952-201-0527

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