Summary

This chapter covered in detail an overview of all UC functionality, and discussed why organizations would choose to deploy Unified Communications.

IM and Presence provides organizations with increased user productivity, and is the core to providing more efficient communications across organizations.

Web, audio, and video conferencing allows organizations to increase productivity, reduce costs, and provide users with a more immersive collaboration experience, no matter where they are in the world.

Enterprise telephony allows organizations to the break the molds of traditional, distributed telephony systems. Organizations can realize major cost savings by centralizing enterprise telephony.

Unified Messaging allows organizations to enhance the traditional messaging capabilities that users are stuck with. By introducing UM, organizations can reduce costs and increase user productivity.

Organizations that choose to invest in Unified Communications are able to achieve return on investment in five key areas:

Audio Conferencing—Many organizations are paying millions in audio conferencing fees per year. UC allows organizations to change their Audio Conferencing model and see significant cost savings.

Centralized Telephony—Organizations are able to reduce their telephony hardware footprint, reduce their support costs, and introduce the opportunity to deploy centralized SIP Trunking.

Productivity—UC introduces productivity increases that can be translated to real dollar amounts.

Travel Costs—UC functionality and UC conferencing allow organizations to reduce travel costs and become a more attractive business partner.

Real Estate—UC allows organizations to explore reducing real estate footprint through the use of modern workspaces.

Last, Microsoft Lync Server 2013 is considered by many to be the preferred UC solution for organizations large and small.

Software-Based UC—Microsoft is a software company that develops software targeted at end-user experience. End-user experience is absolutely critical for UC, and requires a truly software-based UC approach, which Microsoft Lync follows.

Lower TCO—Microsoft has proven to have a lower total cost of ownership than the major competitors in the industry.

Deployment Flexibility—Not only does Microsoft Lync integrate with an existing solution by adding value instead of replacing the system, but the combination of cloud and on-premises services allows organizations to choose at which pace they want to deploy UC.

Remote Access and Federation—The capability to communicate from anywhere, on any device, to nearly anyone in the world is thought by many to be one of the most important features of UC. Microsoft is the leading UC provider when it comes to remote access and federation.