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Microsoft has announced general availability of Microsoft Lync 2010, its replacement for Office Communications Server that offers much better integration between the various channels of communication and collaboration – voice, email, instant messaging video, presence etc – and has named Jetstar Australia as its first customer.

Core IP PBX functionality has been beefed up significantly, making Microsoft a much stronger competitor to the major IP PBX and hosted IP telephony players. Brian Walshe, general manager, Microsoft solutions at Dimension Data Australia, told ExchangeDaily: “The voice side of Lync is much more mature [than OCS]. You now have survivable branch appliances…We are seeing call admission control. There are a lot of elements I would classify as ‘essential enterprise voice elements’ that take it from a possible PBX replacement to one that people should definitely be looking at.” “What Microsoft had was a good solution, but for telephony people there were elements they wanted to see ticked off in a tender response that OCS did not have. Today, Lync ticks all the boxes.” Another key feature of Lync is that the disparate software clients – voice, video, email IM, etc have been integrated into a single client. Also, integration with Microsoft Office applications has been much improved and application programming interfaces enhanced. According to Jaron Cohen, Lync marketing manager for Microsoft Australia “Lync unifies enterprise voice, instant messaging and web-based audio and video conferencing into a connected communications experience. “[It] provides deeper context to communications by empowering people to communicate more efficiently across a range of compatible devices, wherever you have an Internet connection. IT departments can now evolve their infrastructure and either augment or replace their PBX with Lync.” Microsoft claims that “Any device running Lync can turn an engagement into a virtual face-to-face meeting, as any interaction among people with devices running Lync can now include video and audio conferencing, application and desktop sharing, instant messaging, and telephony.” Alexander Oddoz-Mazet, director of business productivity solutions at Microsoft Asia Pacific, said that a number of global corporations had already made large-scale commitments to Lync. “To date with our rapid deployment and technology adoption program we have about 120 customers that have been trying this product over the past 12 months. CONTINUED

“[One of these] Nikon has already seen 30 percent productivity over the previous version of OCS, just from the beta program. They expect to reduce their expenses for hosted audio solutions by more than 15 percent. They are planning on rolling out Lync to 20,000 employees around the world over the next 12 months.” Oddoz-Mazet said that this impressive productivity gain had been achieved largely because of Lync’s single client versus the multiple clients needed for various functions in OCS. He added; “Este Lauder also plans to roll out Lync to about 20,000 employees around the world…And Boeing is planning to roll out Lync to 156,000 employees over the next 12 to 18 months. Fifteen thousand of these will lose their desk phone and make calls direct from their PC.” In Australia, budget airline and Qantas subsidiary, Jetstar, plans to start upgrading its existing Microsoft unified communications environment to Lync from December 2010. According to Jetstar CEO, Stephen Tame. “The Lync solution delivers IP telephony through software and provides Jetstar true business presence across voicemail, messaging, video conferencing and voice. Our team can now answer their desk phones from home, from our Singapore offices, from the back of a taxi or from wherever they are and receive their recorded phone messages via email attachment.” Walshe said Dimension Data was also seeing strong interest in Lync. “We have had two customer sessions with an enormous amount of interest. We had 100 people in Sydney.” He added: “There is some really clever stuff in Lync and where Microsoft is different to the others is that it is really coming at the UC space from a user perspective.” Microsoft said that more than 40 partners would be announcing more than 100 new services and devices specifically designed for Lync. “Hardware products include a variety of headsets, webcams, Internet protocol phones, telepresence systems and USB endpoints optimised for Lync, from partners such as Polycom, Aastra, Plantronics, Jabra, Logitech, Radvision and more.” CONTINUED

It added: “More than 400 partners are currently developing applications on the Lync platform for public and private organisations of all types and sizes. Software solutions include contact centres, call recording, accounting, performance monitoring services and new applications that incorporate communications right within business processes…[And] several partners have also created solutions that integrate Lync deeply into business applications and processes, to address the communications requirements of customers in vertical industries including healthcare, legal and professional services, and emergency systems.” Users wanting to access Lync from mobile devices will be dependent on third party apps for some time yet. Cohen said: “We are not ready to announce any mobile clients yet, we will be making announcements later next year, but some third parties are already developing clients for a range of mobile devices. You will see some of those available at launch.” Microsoft Lync 2010 and Microsoft Lync Server 2010 licences will be available for businesses of all sizes to purchase on December 1, 2010. Microsoft Lync Online – Lync functionality hosted by Microsoft and by partners such as Telstra (T-Suite) – will be available as part of Office 365 next year, with voice capabilities expected in late 2011. Lync Online will include instant messaging, presence, audio and videoconferencing, and PC-to-PC voice calls.

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