Product Variants

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Product Information

Microsoft Lync (formerly Office Communications Server) delivers a powerful, single, unified platform for user communication. With Lync, users can communicate from anywhere, in a single interface, with a new and improved intutive user experience. Lync Server 2010 can provide presence information, instant messaging, enterprise voice capabilities, audio and video conferencing and more, for organisations of any size - with up to 10,000 users per server. It is available in 2 editions depending on the size of your organisation and can either be deployed on-premise or used as a hosted service.

Documents & Downloads

New Features

Unified client

• Access presence information, instant messaging, voice, audio and conferencing capabilities from the new streamlined Microsoft Lync 2010 client
• Maintain one set of contacts across Office applications and Lync 2010
• Connect from virtually anywhere with just a standard internet connection and without requiring a VPN
• Stay connected socially with a new Activity Feed that shows updates from contacts when they change status note, picture, title or office location.

New Enterprise Voice features

• Works with a wide range of IP and USB devices
• New features for implementing highly available communications systems
• Manage and improve bandwidth utilisation and increase the Quality of Experience with Call Admission Control, QoS markings and more

Instant messaging and conferencing improvements

• Connect to public IM clients such as Windows Live, AOL, Yahoo! and Google Talk
• Take advantage of built-in desktop and application sharing, rich white boarding, image copy and paste support and more
• Schedule and join meetings in a single click from within Outlook

Easier to deploy and manage

• New Powershell-based foundation for administration consistent with Exchange Server, Active Directory and other Microsoft products
• Improve security with Role-based Access Control with ready-to-use roles
• A new Silverlight-based, scenario-driven graphical management tool helps improve navigation and control.

Improved APIs

• New and improved client-side APIs allow developers to embed Lync functionality into Windows and Silverlight applications with ready-to-use code snippets
• Enhanced server side APIs make it easy to deliver alerts via IM and phone, enable Web chat and provide automated self-service using query-reponse bots and IVR.

Features

IM (instant messaging) and presence information

IM makes it easy to quickly communicate via instant messages. It includes a full conversation history and works with public IM networks such as MSN/Windows Live, Yahoo! and AOL while presence shows a user's availability through different states such as 'away' and 'busy'. Presence information can be accessed through a variety of applications.

Conferencing

Supports IM conferencing, audio conferencing, web conferencing, video conferencing and application sharing from a single client. Easily 'grow' conferences to include additional users without interrupting the conversation flow.

Enterprise voice

Uses VoIP (Voice over IP) which provides all the capabilities of traditional IP PBX and adds rich presence info, IM, collaboration and meeting capabilities. Features such as call answer, hold, resume, transfer, forward and divert are supported directly, while personalised speed dialing keys are replaced by Contacts lists and automatic intercom is replaced with IM.

Enterprise Voice supports high availability through call admission control (CAC), branch office survivability, and extended options for data resiliency. It integates with existing PBX systems through Session Initation Protocol (SIP) or qualified gateways.

Integrates with Microsoft Office

Integrates directly with Exchange Server, SharePoint Server and Office applications and integrates with the Office 2010 Backstage view for easy document sharing and communicating

Meeting tools are integrated into Outlook 2010 to enable organisers to schedule a meeting or start an impromptu conference with a single click. Outlook users can listen to audio voice mail in Outlook and even read an audio transcription of the message.

Extensible platform

Take advantage of a range of APIs for extending the functionality of Lync.

Supports on-premise or hosted environments

Lync Server 2010 can be deployed on-premises or in a service-based (hosted) or hybrid environment. It offers full and seamless integration with Exchange Online and SharePoint Online, allowing customers to choose how to best deliver enterprise messaging and collaboration capabilities.

Editions

Standard Edition

The Standard Edition is ideal for smaller businesses or branch offices - it is intended for deployments with fewer than 5,000 users either in total or at a particular location.

Enterprise Edition

The Enterprise Edition has all of the Standard Edition features but it provides maximum scalability and high availability to support an unlimited number of users.