Trade Lync Mobile for your Mobile?

Microsoft announced the results of a study this week that indicates that 54% of employees would give up their mobile phone subsidy from their employer in exchange for the ability to work from home. NextUC’s Lync Mobile solutions give businesses the ability to have their cake and eat it too.

NextUC’s Lync mobile solutions integrate so well into the mobile experience that you can use your mobile phone as a real replacement for your desk device. Employers can give employees what they want and the employer can get a much bigger benefit that lowing expenses associated to mobile phones. NextUC can work as a full business communications solution AND provide the Lync Mobile solutions that allow team members to work remotely while maintaining the same level of production as they do in the office.

NextUC’s mobile solutions work on iPhones, Android, Windows Mobile as well as PCs and Mac’s. The solutions allow team members to collaborate with video conferencing, web conferencing and audio conferencing as well as be fully functional telephone/PBX users all while working from home or the office. Businesses that are looking for communications solutions get all of this and also flat out lower their monthly bills.

Don’t believe it? Why not try it for free? No risk, no commitments and run it in parallel and see what it does for your business. Mobility is a strong piece of the story, but it is only a sliver. Companies can be fully up and running in minutes and do not need to make significant investments in new hardware, maintenance agreements or long evaluation cycles that lead nowhere. The new way of communicating is here and it starts with NextUC’s hosted Microsoft Lync with PSTN/Voice. Replace your existing business communications solutions with single, powerful and cheap solution.

Written by Bob Barnes

Online Meetings – Hosted Microsoft Lync

Online meetings are a major business expense especially when coupled with audio conferencing.  NextUC leverages Microsoft Enterprise Lync and provides it from the cloud to deliver online meetings, audio conferencing, web conferencing and screen sharing to its clients.  The experience is powerful and impresses even the most hardcore online meeting users.

Microsoft has done a great job of rounding out the Lync driven online meeting experience.  Where they excel is the integration to the tools that users leverage on a daily basis.  This integration includes being able to launch a screen sharing online meeting from inside of Word, Excel or other Microsoft documents without having to go to an outside tool to do it.  By simply allowing users to go to the “File” menu to drive meetings, Microsoft Lync online meetings eliminates cost, streamlines the meeting experience and drives user adoption…  all of which are key goals in a unified communications deployment.  NextUC takes that handoff and wraps an easy evaluation, 5 minute turnup and no obligation wrapper around the tool for businesses.

Online meetings with Microsoft Lync have almost every required feature addressed as well.  NextUC uses the full Enterprise Voice feature set of Lync and also does the full integration for Lync with PSTN for calling as well as audio conferencing.  This allows users to see the active talker, dial out to add users to the conference, do one touch meeting launch and attendance from desktop or mobile devices, and share desktops or applications as needed.

Industry averages for the number of attendees in an average online meeting is actually very small.  Some estimates have the average meeting attendance at just over three participants.  There are clearly requirements for large meetings with advanced features, but NextUC has found that its Lync platform is more than able to handle over 99% of online meeting with integrated audio conferencing requirements.

“Online meeting usage by our customers is growing significantly month over month,” says Bob Barnes Vice President of Product Sales and Marketing “additionally the customer satisfaction feedback indicates that the product is doing very well as a replacement for other leading online meeting options.”

About NextUC

NextUC exists because professional networking connects business professionals. Collaboration transforms networked professionals into high performance teams. NextUC brings professional collaboration to life with a single product – voice, video, conferencing, messaging and more.

Written by Bob Barnes

Office 365 with PSTN on NextUC

NextUC offers a fantastic experience for companies wanting to use Microsoft Office 365 with PSTN to get a PBX replacement experience. NextUC drives the Office 365 PBX feature set, while Office 365 provides the Exchange, Sharepoint and other services. The combined experience creates the best business communications solution available on the market.

The details are what really drives the unified communications experience of the Office 365 with PSTN provided by NextUC. Microsoft built a fantastic unified messaging product on Exchange 2010. With Exchange Plan 2 or Office 365 Plan E3, NextUC can provide an integrated experience that leverages all of the power of the Exchange Unified Messaging technology but makes it simple, fast and friendly for the team or business. Voicemail and auto attendants are all provided from the Exchange Unified Messaging product on Office 365, the PSTN and Lync services are provided by NextUC.

NextUC can get a group of users up and running with new telephone numbers on Enterprise Lync in 5 minutes with full in and outbound calling, web conferencing, online meetings, audio conferencing, chat, presence and mobile solutions all working. The integration to Office 365 to provide PSTN takes an additional 10-15 minutes of work, once DNS changes have been made by the client. The best part of the experience is that the client can do all of the onboarding without involvement or delays by a partner.

This really enables a great user, team and business experience. Users get to take advantage of things like transcription of voicemails, unified messaging in the Lync client, Exchange mailbox and mobile device, single click meeting launch and join from mobile devices or desktops and other integrated experiences. Business and teams get to take advantage of improved capital expense management, lower operational costs and improved production from knowledge workers across the team or organization.

The bottom line is receiving high satisfaction results from clients who use Office 365 with PSTN provided by NextUC. The Net Promoter Score for clients who use this integration is well above 30, which indicates a very high degree of satisfaction for any telecom type service. The best part… NextUC requires no contract, so there is no risk. Try it for 60 days and leave without obligation or any expense.

Written by Bob Barnes

NextUC Makes Screen Sharing Simple With Office Suite Integration

It is already known that NextUC is the only hosted Lync provider that integrates fully with Microsoft Office 365, adding Enterprise Voice to Microsoft’s suite of cloud services for businesses.  But there are additional features that extend NextUC’s Lync to Office 2010 programs like desktop sharing that let you share and present your work more conveniently and thus more efficiently, in real-time.   In keeping with this theme of sharing, below are some ways to maximize your experience with NextUC Lync 2010.

Lync Contact information in Office 2010 Programs:  This feature allows you to see a contact’s presence information and contact card from within Office 2010 programs.  From this contact card, you then have the option (with one click) to call, email, IM or video chat – instantly.

Outlook Integration

Outlook integration:  Additional Lync features extend to Outlook, enabling you to respond to email messages with an IM or call, based on presence information.  Scheduling Lync online meeting and conference calls can be done automatically from your Outlook calendar.  You can even see a list of your Lync contacts within your Outlook To-Do Bar and see all previous conversations, missed calls, and voicemails, right in your inbox.

Microsoft Word Screen Sharing

Convenient sharing in Word, PowerPoint and Excel:  With Lync, you can easily share any open document instantly, right from the Office program you’re working in.  With the “Send by IM” button in the Review Tab, your document is automatically attached to an IM session with one or more of your Lync contacts.  To share the entire program, you can use the “Share Now” button, initiating a collaborative session in which multiple participants can contribute.

Best of all, these integration features are automatic with a NextUC Enterprise subscription and require no additional setup or configuration changes.  You can start leveraging all of these enhanced productivity features and more immediately with NextUC’s free 60-day introductory offer of hosted Lync 2010 with voice.

Written by Bob Barnes

As it turns out, the Lync iPad (or Lync iPhone) experience is pretty amazing. Microsoft did a very good job on their Lync client, but it lacks in a few areas. Fortunately there is a partner that can fill the void for a customer with certain requirements.

Damaka has created a client that works really well for all aspects of the Lync experience including adding video conferencing and web conferencing to the iPad. The major difference between the Microsoft Lync Mobile client experience and the Damaka Xavy client experience is around video and web conferencing. If your remote users are iPad driven users, Xavy by Damaka is the way to go. If your users are more looking for 1 click joining for audio meetings, presence extensions, dialing with your corporate phone number being the outbound calling ID and chat… go with the Microsoft client.

Both are available in the app stores for Apple (Lync iPhone, Lync iPad) and for Android (and for the Windows Phone). Both seem to perform very well and we have not experienced any stability issues with either.

The Lync mobile experience should be a key to any rollout of Lync, either with or without NextUC. Businesses that do not have a high percentage of knowledge workers won’t likely have a great experience with Lync in general. Keep in mind that one of the fundamental changes in the way Lync works when contrasted to a traditional PBX (or IP PBX) is that it thinks about communication as being with an individual, not with a device. The goal of Lync is to make communication with an individual as easy and efficient as possible no matter when or on what device they are working. That approach is different than calling a main telephone number, announcing over a PA system that Susie has a call on Line 1…

Lync is changing the business communication experience for the strong positive, but you need to know what you are getting into.

Written by Bob Barnes

Foster City, March 20, 2012 – NextUC is gaining ground as a go to solution for business looking to break the traditional mold associated with the telephone and carrier world. The cracks in the mold include: no contracts, free 60 day evaluation period, instant turn up; telephone calls, video conferencing, web conferencing, audio conferencing, chat, presence, and mobile solutions all working in minutes rather than months (or never).

NextUC has changed the perspective that traditional carriers have forced on the business community for decades. NextUC believes that a customer’s loyalty must be earned every day and allows customers to leave without penalty at any point. NextUC believes the playing field should be set so that business customers can lower their costs, consolidate vendors, ease user adoption of powerful tools and… also have the ability to leave if the relationship is not working for any reason.

The approach is attracting customers at record pace. NextUC has set record customer additions month over month since its commercial launch. Customer satisfaction is driving word of mouth referrals which in turn create more momentum for NextUC. Customers can expect to experience a team communications and collaboration experience that provides more value at less cost than they are typically spending on web conferencing alone.

“The reception we are receiving from our customers is very encouraging,” says Bob Barnes VP of Product Sales and Marketing “customers are providing us with a clear message that expectations are changing for the telecom world. They are happy about the new way of doing business.”

NextUC offers a 60 free trial period for all services including video conferencing, web conferencing, audio conferencing, telephone service, mobility and more.

About NextUC
NextUC exists because professional networking connects business professionals. Collaboration transforms networked professionals into high performance teams. NextUC brings professional collaboration to life with a single product – voice, video, conferencing, messaging and more. Communicate the way you want and solve hard problems. It’s as powerful as that. With NextUC clients can replace their phone and conferencing providers and simply use Lync for all of their communication needs. NextUC works on all operating systems including Windows, iOS, Android, and Windows Phone and has a mobile client available for all major mobile platforms. For more information please visit www.nextuc.com

Written by Bob Barnes

Everyone knows that UC stands for “Unified Communication.” But does it? Better yet, should it? Does adding some messaging component to a dime-a-dozen VoIP solution really merit the “UC” label – or does the bar need raising? NextUC believes it does. With ever-increasing mobility and dispersal of the work force, businesses need more than just “Unified” Communication they need the embrace the next UC – Unified Collaboration.

Unified Collaboration extends far beyond just voice and messaging to include all forms of business interactions – it’s everything professionals use to share ideas and work effectively and efficiently towards tangible goals. NextUC embraces this concept, delivering a truly unified collaboration solution that’s up and running in a matter of minutes. Of course it provides full PBX functionality, but that’s just the beginning. From a single, easy-to-use platform, NextUC also provides conferencing (web, audio & video), IM, Presence, content sharing and more – all the tools essential for effective collaboration.

Still skeptical about the value of Unified Collaboration? We love skeptics – that’s why NextUC lets you evaluate the full product for 2 months before you buy. No risk. All reward.

Can it be done? Will it work? Is this what it is intended for? Yes, yes, yes… in most cases, ha! Lync works as a PBX replacement really well for companies that fit a certain profile. Fortunately that profile makes up a significant and growing percentage of businesses today.

If your business takes a call in on “line 1” and then announces on a speaker that there is as call on “line 1” for Joe Smith who works in a warehouse some place, Lync is probably not for you. If a significant percentage of your employees do not have a PC/MAC, Lync is probably not for you either.

However, for the rest of the workforce NextUC’s Lync works really well as a PBX/Telephone System replacement. Small businesses can replace their existing communications relationships with one that can be tried before it is purchased, requires no long term contracts, leaves the customer in control if things ever don’t meet their expectations and allows team members to produce better than they ever have in the past. Large businesses can now get onto a Lync Enterprise server with Voice enabled in minutes and have a workforce that is able to adopt to a more team oriented way of working with little to no friction in getting started.

Lync adds additional benefits for companies who have a large percentage of knowledge workers with powerful mobile solutions that work for almost any device including the iPhone, iPad, Mac and obviously the PC. These solutions include corporate secure IM, Presence, call routing changes, unified messaging integration, corporate caller ID masking and one click adds for audio and web conferencing.

NextUC delivers the Lync PBX replacement service from the cloud and recommends for the best experience that its customers sign up for either Exchange Plan 2 or Office365 Plan E3 from Microsoft’s cloud. The combined services will drive down costs, provide much better service and enable your workers to produce, it is as simple as that.

Written by Bob Barnes

Uptake by NextUC clients of the Office365 integration is ticking along at a very strong pace.  50% of the customers signing up now are also signing up for Office365 Exchange Plan2 or Office365 E3.  The integration is outstanding from a user’s experience and is easy for a company to setup.

All key features in Lync Enterprise are available for users once the integration is complete…  plus Enterprise Voice with in and outbound calling to the PSTN (not just PC to PC).  Rich presence, call and communication records, voicemail in the Lync client, presence in Outlook and Sharepoint, voicemail and auto attendant being delivered from Office365 Exchange Unified Messaging all work like they do when they are delivered by a premise based deployment or through Office365.  Customers get the huge advantage of having access to full telephony calling features and the ability to replace existing or new telephone systems or services.

As historic technology evolution has done in the past, the Cloud’s day for providing Unified Communications is now.  Office365 with voice, Video, Online Meetings, Conferencing, Chat, Presence, that all work with the tools a business uses today.  AND everything can be up and working in five to ten minutes.

Net/Net… get the best from the cloud, and get out of the painful, historic telephone company approach to a customer relationship.  You can try it before buying it with the FREE 60 day trial, you don’t need to sign up for a long term agreement because everything is month to month, and get the service you deserve or move on to someone that will provide you the service you need.

Written by Bob Barnes

Foster City, CA – March 6th, 2012: Today, NextUC announces that February was a record month for new user and customer additions.  Customer usage of video conferencing rose 191% and Online web and audio meetings rose 131%.  NextUC is attracting business customers looking for ways to improve communication between individuals who make up teams and delivering on the promise of helping these teams increase productivity and value.

Businesses can now come to the website (www.nextuc.com), evaluate service, onboard with a non-technical resource, evaluate service at no risk for 60 days and then convert to a paying customer with no commitment.  The change in the dynamics for a Unified Communications service, including VoIP, is driving a very high Net Promoter Score of 43 which is an indication of customer satisfaction and loyalty.

“Companies are onboarding at records rates monthly.  It seems to be driven by the need for better ways to collaborate, communicate and work.” said Bob Barnes, Director of Product Marketing and Sales.  “These teams are using services across platforms including iPhones, iPads, PC’s, MAC,s Android and Windows Phones”.

NextUC users can use a broad range of devices including Jabra, Polycom and other phones either tethered to PCs or Mac’s, or as full Ethernet phones.  NextUC also supports Microsoft Lync clients on iPhones, iPads, Android and Windows Phones.  This combination of platform support provides business teams a unique opportunity to generate more production and make faster decisions.  In addition, NextUC requires no installation fees, no term commitments and can have telephone numbers up and working in minutes.

NextUC believes that communication is the heart of high performance teams and brings professional collaboration to life by delivering one unified communications product for complete collaboration: presence, chat, voice, video, conferencing, web sharing and more for free for a limited time. Customers are welcome to sign up for the 60-day Free Trial through an easy self-provisioning portal and be up and running within a few minutes.

About NextUC

NextUC exists because professional networking connects business professionals.    Collaboration transforms networked professionals into high performance teams.    NextUC brings professional collaboration to life with a single product – voice, video, conferencing, messaging and more.  Communicate the way you want and solve hard problems.   It’s as powerful as that. With NextUC clients can replace their phone and conferencing providers and simply use Lync for all of their communication needs. NextUC works on all operating systems including Windows, iOS, Android, and Windows Phone and has a mobile client available for all major mobile platforms. For more information please visit www.nextuc.com

Written by Bob Barnes