Lync Mobile’s Place In UCaaS

UCaaS and Unified Communications in general are terms thrown about by a number of different companies in the B2B space today. The concept is to have the ability to effectively communicate and collaborate with team members in a number of different ways and on a number of different devices. Team members can include people in your company, in other companies or customers… or combinations of each of those groups.

Simply evaluating that at arm’s length makes a clear requirement for a strong mobile story. iPads, iPhones, Andriod and even Windows Phones must have a strong presence in any solution that calls itself unified communications. The experience must be more than splitting a call intended to ring a desk phone and also ringing a mobile phone.

Microsoft has done a good job of building a Microsoft Lync Mobile story. Lync for iPhone, Lync for iPad, Lync for Android and obviously Lync for Windows Phone all include many interesting and creative ways of uniting a truly mobile worker with team members in corporate locations.

Mobile users have apps in the various stores that are free, powerful and fully integrated into the UCaaS story. Once installed, users can join web conferences and audio conferences with a single click, they have full presence and instant messaging capability, they can place calls from their mobile device with the outbound caller ID of their office number and can even join video calls with 3rd party app offerings. Beyond those types of user experiences, users can also manage their communication environment by easily setting hours for call forking/simultaneous ringing, business hours, availability and other powerful user experience settings.

Unified communications is a big term for a simple concept. Make communicating with the right person or people easy and fast. With that in mind, integrating mobile workers into the experience is a must as most high value workers for companies spend a great deal of time traveling.

Written by Bob Barnes

Lync Devices Does Not Mean Handsets, Necessarily

NextUC makes evaluating, deploying and supporting Microsoft Lync Enterprise Voice a breeze.  NextUC is a hardcore business communications product, but does that mean that traditional telephone handsets are a key part of the customer experience?…  No!

Business users today are increasingly moving toward a mobile and dispersed workplace.  Many thought leaders today believe that actual employee counts for the majority of businesses will drop significantly in the mid-term.  That is not to say that employment as a whole will drop, just that a significant number of people will be independent employees… which also means that the mobile and dispersed concept will keep on rolling.  NextUC takes the business communication challenge, moves it to the cloud and makes an employee’s experience with the solution flexible and enjoyable.

The concept of a phone changes dramatically, but the good news is that dramatic change is for the better.  Users can now going with something as simple as their PC, MAC or iPad as their calling and video device.  They can also go as far as getting a great and cost effective conference room video conferencing solution like the Poly CX5000.  Microsoft also created great software clients that are supported on NextUC for Android, iPhone, iPad and Windows Phones.

NextUC also supports highly mobile solutions like the Polycom CX100 or the Plantronics Calisto Bluetooth Headsets.  These devices and ones like they work in conjunction with your PC or MAC and can even pair with mobile phones for better overall ease of use.

There is and will be requirements that will make Ethernet deskphones a requirement as well.  NextUC supports the CX600 deskphone and the CX3000 conference room phone for more traditional work styles.

The point of all of this is the change is inevitable and the pace of it is quickening.  NextUC has taken the Microsoft Lync product and made it something that businesses can quickly and easily adopt to keep up with the pace of change and the changing demands of their workforce.

Written by Bob Barnes

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

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

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

NextUC will soon start supporting Mobile client for it’s Cloud version of Microsoft Lync. What is all the hype about?

The mobile client for Lync 2010 takes the power of unified communications mobile – including rich presence, instant messaging, audio, video and web conferencing and calling features from a single, user-friendly interface. Check out how it will look:

What this nice interface means is that you will be able to do the following on the GO:

• Join conference calls with a single touch – without access code or pin number required.
• Stay connected from wherever you are – see who’s available at a glance and connect via chat, phone or conference call.
• Make calls with a consistent identity – make outbound calls using your business phone number keeping your identity consistent.

Do you want more info? Sign up for a free demo!

Written by Bob Barnes

NextUC announces impending support for Microsoft’s Mobile Lync client for our cloud Microsoft Lync product.  The evolution continues to quicken as we add support for mobile users on Microsoft native products for iOS, Windows Phone, Symbian and Android.  NextUC is built on Microsoft’s Lync Enterprise server and NextUC will need to go through a product update to support the newly released clients.  The support for the mobile client will be 100% self provisionable as is every facet of our current product.  This is just another example of how an IT department can look like stars by leveraging NextUC to be up and running on a full telephony enabled Cloud Lync product in minutes… including functioning telephone numbers and unified messaging.  The exact release date for the Microsoft Mobile Lync client for NextUC has not been announced, but we will get the word out as soon as it is.

Written by Bob Barnes

The growing trend of ‘working-at-home’ creates immense benefits for the employer and the employees. Employers save on real estate cost, infrastructure and telecommunications and on top of that achieve higher employee satisfaction and lower attrition rates. Employees save time and money on commute, work clothes and lunches and ultimately everybody is happier. However, every company needs a solid and flexible communications system to allow virtual workers to work efficiently from home, the road or a coffee shop.

It is no longer enough to have just a laptop and a cell phone, you need the ability to take business phone calls from wherever you are on a single number. You need to be able to get on conference calls right from your laptop or tablet. You also want to see who on your team is available so you can get answers faster and speed up your decision making process. Microsoft Lync provides an interface that delivers all of these benefits – Presence, chat, telephony, conferencing and collaboration tools accessible from anywhere.

If you are a small business and don’t want to purchase and manage the server yourself, the best option is to sign up with a hosted provider and have Lync delivered from the Cloud. That way, you can focus on projects, not on maintaining the technology. NextUC delivers hosted Lync and  will allow you to not only leverage the rich communications features but also make phone calls directly from the Lync client.  It is powered by CallTower, Microsoft Gold Certified client with over a decade of experience managing hosted Microsoft communications.  See how it works here. Right now we are running a limited time free Beta trial so you can check out the benefits of Lync for yourself. It is free so you have nothing to lose.

Written by Bob Barnes

The term ‘mobile workforce’ should be simplified to ‘workforce’. Every company that I work with absolutely has a need for improved mobile workforce support even if they do not recognize it. The good news is that empowering workers to be mobile makes them happier and improves productivity out of each of the resources if there is a good communications strategy to support them.

Microsoft has begun the process of releasing Mango for their Windows Phone product line. It seems reasonable that they have held back the release of Lync 2010 Mobile until Mango is release because of the necessity for support of multiple active applications on the Windows Phones. Now that Windows Phones should have a good technical balance against Android and iPhone, it only makes sense that Lync Mobile should be on its way.

Other variations of the product have already been released for the iPad, iPhone and Android like Xync. Under any circumstance the fact that all core messaging and communications can all be accessed on a wide variety of mobile platforms further extends the value of Lync for any business. The challenge, or course, for many companies is the need for product evaluation, provisioning and support. The good news is that the adoption and effective use of products like Lync, Lync Mobile, xync and more are all supported on the NextUC product.

Keep your employees happy and productive and feel secure while doing it. Take corporate communications to the cloud with NextUC and make a positive impact for everyone.