Chapter 2. What’s New in Microsoft Lync Server 2013

Microsoft Lync Server 2013 has introduced a number of significant improvements from its predecessor, Lync Server 2010, and made yet another compelling case for organizations to consider upgrading. Microsoft has invested a great deal of engineering effort in enhancing the conferencing experience with features such as the Gallery View, in which up to five concurrent video streams can be displayed, and making a codec change from RTVideo to the industry-standard H.264.

On the server-side, Lync has even greater redundancy possible by replicating contact lists and conferencing data between paired pool sets. Lync Server 2013 also has tighter integration with Exchange Server and can leverage the same archiving policies and store already defined for eDiscovery purposes. Some roles such as Monitoring and Archiving have been consolidated on to Front End servers, and the old Office Communications Server XMPP gateway has been natively integrated in to the Front End and Edge Servers.

This chapter covers the major changes and improvements most organizations try to leverage in their business case for upgrading servers.