We first showed an early beta of our Lync 2010 mobile clients at Enterprise Connect earlier this year, sharing our vision for how these clients would extend the capabilities of Lync beyond the desktop. I’m thrilled to announce that Lync 2010 for Windows Phone is now available for download via Windows Marketplace and that Lync 2010 clients...

Authors: Lync Team

Analysts play a key role in the tech industry. They look at how products are actually being used in the real world and advise their IT clients. Perhaps one of the most respected firms in the enterprise IT market is Gartner, with a dedicated team of analysts who closely watch the UC market.

Every year, Gartner publishes a series of...

Authors: Kirk Gregersen

When we first announced Lync Server 2010 last November, we talked about our commitment to supporting multiple platforms and how over the course of 2011 you would see Lync become available for other platforms. Today, I’m excited to share with you today that Lync for Mac 2011 has been Released to Manufacturing, commonly...

Authors: Lync Team

My role on the Lync team focuses on “gadgets for Lync”, I manage the relationship with our audio and video device partners, and one of the things I like about working on this team is our focus on improving the customer experience. One question we get asked on occasion is what devices have been qualified/certified to...

Authors: Lync Team

Today I wanted to bring your attention to an article the U.S. Army wrote about its Lync pilot. I was excited to learn how the Army believes Lync can benefit its personnel, and I think you’ll find it interesting as well. At the Command and Control Directorate for the U.S. Army’s Communications-Electronics Research,...

Today Microsoft officially unveiled its new unified communications platform, Lync. Microsoft has transformed the slightly boring OCS R2 into a platform that enables more collaboration like sharing slides (not just desktops) and embraces a bit of social media. Instead of simple status “jelly beans”, Lync provides photos of users and a mini-bio on their subject matter expertise from Sharepoint. Lync also federates with other instant message and voice platforms like Jabber and Google Talk so I can use one platform to talk with friends and colleagues online.

Earlier this week, I attended a launch event at Microsoft’s San Francisco office. One of the most compelling portions of the presentation was given by Microsoft’s internal IT department. They shared best practices from their internal Lync deployment, and, no surprise, it was completely focused on end users. Here are three tips that made their “dogfooding” successful:

• Find evangelists within the organization. They selected about 30 executives who they identified as early adopters and influencers within Microsoft. Setting up Lync for these executives helped generate demand and interest from employees. Tom Pacyk, a UC consultant, agrees with this approach and included it in his post, “6 Tips for Deploying UC to End Users”. I think this is a really good strategy – although IT departments may want to cast the net wider than just executives to generate interest. It’s as simple as finding early adopters who collaborate regularly with others in the organization. Let them also sing the praises of Lync to generate excitement from peers. Who hasn’t been a tiny bit jealous of the guy who brings the iPad to meetings instead of lugging a clunky laptop around?
• Flexible End User Training. Microsoft IT recommends flexible training sessions. Offer many different times and curriculum for training. Make it easier for people to find the time to attend – not a chore. Also, have sessions matched to users proficiency. A two-hour training in a giant conference room with 200 people is going to be ineffective. Think about creating modules – an in-depth training for first time users and a “refresher” for those who’ve used OCS and are just transition to Lync. Microsoft IT even recommended a simple “cheat sheet” for people who prefer to figure things out on their own and just need a little reference guide. I think they key is don’t overwhelm people. It may stretch resources within IT to offer flexible training but the payoff is there. Nothing is a bigger waste of IT’s time, than deploying a technology no one wants to use.
• Endpoints. Yes, I work for Plantronics so I may have a slight bias towards the importance of headsets, speakerphones and other audio devices. As part of their presentation, Microsoft IT stressed the importance of Lync certified endpoints to ensure a positive user-experience. I spoke with him after the presentation and he used the analogy, “it’s like buying a top-of-the line, hi-def TV and hooking it up with the red/white/yellow free cables” to describe a voice experience on Lync without a certified endpoint. Plantronics has taken it a step further by offering more than just headsets. Not all end users are the same and endpoints should reflect the work styles of the individual. Today, Plantronics announced its Lync optimized portfolio and previewed three new devices for 2011.

What do you think? Does IT have the bandwidth to do proper training? Should they make the time? Do endpoints matter? How important are internal evangelists? I’d love to hear tips and tricks to help create excitement for UC within an organization. Or even better, missteps that should be avoided.

Authors: Lync Team

This blog is post #7 in the Ten Days of Office series to celebrate the one-year anniversary since the release of Office 2010 and provide you with tips and tricks to get the most from your Office experience. Tune in each week day for new tips and tricks!

June 9, 2011,

Yancey Smith, Director of Product Management, Lync

On the advent...

Authors: Lync Team

We have won a lot of projects with customers who were considering some of our competitors’ products. I took a closer look at what makes Lync a better solution for these customers, and what I found was that customers believe Lync stands above its competition because of features that are easy to use and the interoperation...

Authors: Julia White

Almost everyone knows the Toshiba brand, but you might not know that they recently switched from Lotus Notes to Exchange and SharePoint.   Toshiba has 130,000 employees worldwide and is a global leader in electronics manufacturing.  Their story is very typical of large, global companies that have switched from...

Authors: Lync Team

Interoperability (sometimes also shortened to just “interop”) is a topic that the Lync team pays a lot of attention to. And interop isn’t just a focus for us—it has been a huge topic in the unified communications industry as well. At the Enterprise Connect conference in March and the Lync sessions at...