Enterprise Voice Gaining Ground with Lync 2013

Microsoft is preparing to make a business case for its offer Lync Unified Communications Conference next week in San Diego.

Microsoft probably talk over " the voice of business" in Lync conference next week.

The event, to be held in San Diego on February 19 will be a "first" for Lync , according to Microsoft . The server was previously marketed as " Microsoft Office Communicator , " but Lync 2013 , the latest version of Microsoft server product that launched in October , will be streamed deep dive technical discussions during the event in San Diego. Microsoft Lync Online also sells through its Office 365 service . Lync 2013 is a unified communications solution for organizations that offer features such as voice over IP (VoIP ), instant messaging , presence and conferencing .

In general , Microsoft is seeing more of your customers to use Lync Enterprise Voice , which is the VoIP solution Microsoft , said Scott Gode , senior director of Avanade . Enjoy Azaleos previously served with a major IT services partner Avanade announced it was acquiring in November. Seattle-based Avanade also announced this month it bought Opstera , which offers a management solution for public clouds such as Windows Azure will integrate management solutions Azaleos private cloud ' .

Avanade is a leading business solutions some " single which was formed in 2000 from investments by Microsoft and Andersen Consulting, later known as Accenture. At that time , the property was divided about 51 percent to 49 percent between Accenture and Microsoft , respectively, but now Accenture owns about 75 percent of Avanade , according to Gode .

VoIP Gains Ground

Enjoys hypothesized that the increased use of VoIP could get eco event in Lync 2013.

"A year ago, only 10 percent [ of the companies used ] corporate voice ," Gode said in a telephone interview . " Now , more than 50 percent of the new company Lync that comes our way is the voice of the associate. Thus, there is a renewed confidence in Lync voice platform as very good . And especially in this 2013 version , [ there ] in much of an upward trend from iT companies and people in the space of enterprise telephony Lync is alive . "

One advantage is that Lync 2013 is now in its fourth version . Gode ​​said that some people think that the conventional wisdom is to wait for a third version before a Microsoft server product can be considered feasible.

Use the Lync Enterprise voice was low due in part to the skeptical client , Gode said, but consulting company has also recommended a gradual approach. For example, Azaleos , who had provided advice and monitoring services consultancy Lync Server , Exchange and SharePoint before these features are wrapped in Managed Services Avanade , had advised their clients to go slow in implementing voice of his company .

" Part of this is based on our own recommendations to customers to deploy Lync probably should not start with the piece of heading out the door, because this is the hardest part ," said Gode . "But start with a photograph, or a conference messaging , instant messaging or more conferences. "

This approach can help to train end-users working with the " new form of unified communications ," said Gode . " Why , of course, there is a part of the base of consumers who are accustomed to things like population Skype, and are slowly getting comfortable with the concept of VoIP , but it is different when I put into the business. " Added organizations will only have to be careful how VoIP was launched , and that the help desk calls will diminish the users become more confident.

Bringing unified communications in an organization is both a technical challenge and a cultural shift workers . Enjoys term to describe this change is allowing " business practices communications - enabled" - something that supports Avanade provides application development services to extend Lync.

Engineering Lync

Technically , the best practices can sometimes be too myopic . Azaleos soon learned that the engineering environment "golden" Lync and put it in a dynamic environment may have limitations .

" We'd go and architect the perfect environment Lync pristine gold," Gode said, "and then put that in a corporate environment . What we found was that we were getting the network environment Lync at any time that is considered stable and then became unstable after ... because the company has added some different application bandwidth suction or evaluate the network correctly to begin with. way, the end result was that , despite the brilliant architecture of Lync , the customer experience was bad in their relationship with the quality of voice calls and the quality of the conference. "

Avanade Accenture uses tools to make assessments of the network and to conduct a comprehensive study before installing Lync. Allows Avanade to make recommendations on how the network has to change and how to maintain the static grid so there is no change in quality, Gode said.

Microsoft has released Lync 2013 , the network requirements that are quite detailed, but currently lacks details on some of the new requirements for the videos, which are still in preparation, Gode said. Microsoft has recently launched its own tool Lync Connectivity Analyzer to troubleshoot wireless connectivity devices . Avanade and offer their support tools , Lync , and provides expert support monitoring network , Gode said. Avanade has acquired Azaleos partly to acquire managed services platform that company. Gode ​​said Avanade can install Lync and leave things as they are, but " our value proposition is around managed services. "

Kinks are still getting VoIP to work with Microsoft 's public cloud .

"There are still complexities to the voice of the public cloud or have not yet been completely understood, or 100,000 people a CIO is not yet ready to commit to the public cloud yet," Gode said. "If you objectively look at architecture of Microsoft , in order to run for Lync voice of business , it simply is not feasible with Office 365. Then a customer would have to invest in Office 365 for SharePoint and Exchange, but in reality was put on premise server to allow the voice of the company the way Microsoft has invented today. "

The Skype Question

Skype , the VoIP service that Microsoft acquired in May 2011 , it remains a mystery how they connect to Lync . However, in a press conference made ​​Microsoft last year , Jamie Stark , senior product marketing manager in the Microsoft Lync team , offered a look.

" Federation Skype works in much the same way as the existing Lync federation and public IM ago today ," said Stark. "Therefore, Lync users can add contacts to your Skype contact list - . 's Not necessary to have the Skype client running for this to happen Lync user identity is used to communicate to the user as Skype . From the point of view of ' user , it is always your corporate identity by Lync . "

Lync Server currently supports VoIP connections to the public switched telephone network through the trunking protocol login without having to use a provider of IP telephony services , in accordance with Stark. However, it is a different picture when using Lync Online.

" With Office 365 and Lync Online , PSTN connectivity for inbound and outbound ," said Stark. " Today, it is [ done ] with Jajah , and the offer is really designed for SMEs [small and medium-sized enterprises ] . Moreover, there are other companies in the process of providing this capability with Lync Online in the future. "

Jajah Mountain View, integrated communication support for the California-based IP communications services in more than 200 countries operator . Yet , support for Lync Jajah online seems relegated to smaller deployments , at this point , according enjoys .

" The Jajah is an important and interesting first foray into telephony network provider in connection with the Lync experience to try to achieve a level of synergy that can be passed on to end customers , but today is really the only solution is due to a situation of the type of small business and really does not adapt to the larger companies, where we are doing most of our work today. could this scenario feasible for large companies ? Maybe ... but let's face it , consumers have Skype ( VoIP Solution 100 percent) , and Microsoft owns and which have been very cautious about exactly what the future of Skype is that it refers to the Lync platform and the history of Microsoft speech in general. "

Enjoys speculated that Microsoft was interested primarily in obtaining the brand and the customers were comfortable with Skype, when he purchased the VoIP company . Microsoft acquired Skype may also have to win the intellectual property and personal experience. "And we'll see how that manifests itself in the way ," he added .