Unified Communications/Lync

Last week, as expected, Microsoft introduced the new business editions of Office 365. This launch followed closely after the Microsoft Lync Conference the previous week, so it's worth highlighting that the version of Lync Online included in the latest Office 365 editions will be Lync 2013. Perhaps the question is whether companies are ready to seriously consider the cloud for unified communications (UC) deployments -- and whether Lync 2013 in Lync Online will give customers enough to really consider it to meet their UC needs. One of the big announcements at the Lync Conference was the integration of Lync into the Skype division of Microsoft. As two major communications platforms, the move certainly makes a lot of sense. Skype has primarily been a consumer-driven product, but Skype division president Tony Bates used his part of the opening keynote to talk about how the combination of these platforms creates a communications environment centered on people that spans home and work life....More