Traditionally, the part of the IT organization that implements Lync for instant messaging, SharePoint and Exchange is different from the part of IT that implements voice and video tools. Lync will also require companies to take a closer look at how their networks are designed and how their IT organizations are structured. Lync Will Force Companies to Evaluate How IT Is Structured "The downside is that with Lync you're going to spend more money increasing WAN capacity, possibly as much $250,000 to cover voice and video," he adds. Having voice telephony and video in the same product are big bandwidth hogs, notes Blood. With a PBX system you cannot do video, so that limits the amount of bandwidth you use. The cost for the Professional edition of Cisco's suite is $500.ĭespite Lync's improved bandwidth management, it still uses a lot more bandwidth than traditional solutions, says Blood, and companies will have to account for that somehow. The savings become more apparent when you compare Lync to Cisco's full voice, video and messaging suite, called Cisco Unified Workspace Licensing. "There's a good business argument here for putting in Microsoft's voice product instead of Avaya or Cisco," says Blood. In comparison, the basic voice licenses for Cisco and Avaya are $250. To enable all features, a user must be licensed with all three CALs. There are three license options for Lync: a Standard CAL includes instant messaging and presence and costs $31 per user an Enterprise CAL includes everything in a Standard CAL plus audio, video and Web conferencing, and costs $107 per user a Plus CAL includes enterprise voice telephony technologies plus everything in a standard CAL and a few features of an Enterprise CAL plus - it also costs $107. Lync Server 2010 follows the CAL (client access license) model, where a license is required for each user. This is something you could not do with OCS. For example, you can route voice calls over the WAN but route video over the Internet if the video doesn't have to be perfect quality. Lync's bandwidth management upgrade also allows IT pros to split what goes over the WAN and what goes over the Internet. You could just keep adding users, which would eventually deteriorate call quality." "With OCS there was no ability to monitor how many users were using bandwidth. "They've added Call Admission Control, a common function in PBX systems that monitors how many users are allowed onto the network at one time," says Blood. With Lync, Microsoft is providing better bandwidth management than it did with OCS. It does IM and Web conferencing, but it relies on PBX vendors for the voice telephony part.įor IT, Blood says the integration of Lync makes life easier because they need just need a PC and one set of servers from one supplier to use Lync. IBM's UC suite, Sametime, doesn't have the voice component. The biggest Lync competitor is Cisco, but its UC suite tends to be more expensive. Other companies provide these tools, but none have seamlessly integrated them as well as Microsoft, says Blood. What Lync offers businesses is the ability to access and switch between instant messaging, video and voice telephony features in a single interface. It makes communication easier and could be a money saver, but it has the potential to be a worker distraction, and voice and video eat up network bandwidth.Īt the launch event in New York, CIO.com's Shane O'Neill sat down with Gartner Research Vice President Stephen Blood to map out the advantages and challenges of moving your company to Lync. The lure for businesses with Lync is that it is capable of augmenting or replacing traditional PBX and conferencing systems, thereby saving companies money on hardware and licensing costs.īut there are other serious considerations for companies looking at Lync. The Microsoft cloud-based version of Lync, Lync Online, is due out next year, as part of Office 365. ![]() Lync Server and client software are available for purchase on December 1.
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