When the Gurdeep Singh, Corporate VP of Microsoft Office Communications Group announced "the era of the PBX, folks, is over..." at a press conference in New York late last year, it left many people thinking whether this was indeed true or whether this was another Microsoft PR initiative aimed at making businesses buy a new application they will not fully use or see the true benefits of.

Lets face it, most people would be inclined to replace their PBX systems but only for something that can perform to the same standards of reliability as their incumbent systems. The one thing businesses should never sacrifice is the quality of voice.

Microsoft claims that there are numerous benefits in augmenting or replacing traditional PBX and conferencing systems with Lync and that its new functionality makes it ready to centralise call control and other phone features to reduce the number of devices that need to be maintained; thereby saving companies money on hardware and licensing costs.

Lync combines three different products in a single package, which are an instant messaging system with presence, an audio and video conferencing tool, and finally a voice call service. It also integrates directly into MS Office, SharePoint and Exchange products.

According to Microsoft many new Lync corporate clients have saved millions by replacing their PBX infrastructure with Lync. This claim is supported by industry analysts; Forrester Research predicts in their recent report, that Lync provides a 337 percent ROI (return on investment) and £6.2 million in cost savings for a 5,000-employee business over a three-year period.

But there are other serious considerations for companies looking at Lync. It makes communication easier and could be a money saver, but it has the potential to be a worker distraction, and voice and video eat up network bandwidth. Therefore ensuring network capability and resilience is a definite pre-requisite for companies serious about Lync. This leads us to the discussion of whether a hosted solution or an in-house deployment is the best option, however we will analyse this in another blog.

The core advantage Lync has over the traditional PBX system is the ability to access and switch between instant messaging, video and voice telephony features in a single interface. This opens up the doors to a number of cost and time saving benefits that no traditional PBX system can cater for.

Improved bandwidth management

With Lync, Microsoft is providing better bandwidth management than it did with OCS as it added Call Admission Control, a common function in PBX systems that monitors how many users are allowed onto the network at one time, in order to maintain the call quality.

Lync's bandwidth management upgrade also allows IT pros to split what goes over the WAN and what goes over the Internet. For example, you can route voice calls over the WAN but route video over the Internet if the video doesn't have to be perfect quality.

The challenges

Lync still consumes a lot of bandwidth

Despite Lync's improved bandwidth management, it still uses a lot more bandwidth than traditional solutions. PBX systems can't do video, so this limits the amount of bandwidth they use. Having voice telephony and video in the same product increases the bandwidth demands and associated costs in increasing WAN capacity to cover voice and video needs.

Lync will force companies to evaluate how IT is structured?

Lync will also require companies to take a closer look at how their networks are designed and how their IT organizations are structured.

Traditionally, the part of the IT organization that implements Lync for instant messaging, SharePoint and Exchange is different from the part of IT that implements voice and video tools. Companies have to figure out how to get these people to work together.

Can users cope to more interruption?

Lync makes communication easier and more flexible, yet could also lead to a workforce that is even more distracted. For Lync to be truly used enterprise-wide, workers will have to get over the hurdle of being interrupted more. However an IM is less of a distraction than a lengthy call and when presence control is used effectively, users are free to specify when and how they can be contacted. Users have complete control.

So can Lync really replace the PBX?

Okay, maybe you're thinking that this Lync thing sounds good, but can it really provide the enterprise-class service of my current PBX system? The answer is a resounding yes. Lync Server 2010 offers all the features of a traditional or an IP PBX, including call forwarding, hold, transfer, and E911 support, plus features that are unique to Lync, such as skill-based people search and integration with all Microsoft Office applications. So you can rest assured you won't lose a thing by replacing your PBX system with Lync. What's more, don't overlook the simplicity of operation and lower total cost of ownership that Lync's software-based system offers over a solution built on a hardware approach. And even if you're wedded to your current communication system because it is fully depreciated, you can still get the unique features of Lync by adding it as an enhancement. Either way-as a full replacement or as an enhancement-Lync can bring a complete solution to your communications infrastructure.

There are many network service providers who say they can support Microsoft OCS & Lync technologies. As a potential customer of these services, how do you separate those who say they can from those who actually can?

The answer lies in the quality of the provider's validation accreditation of the technology. These pre-launch test schedules are designed to ensure that providers do not fall foul when services are being deployed and subsequently need to be supported in typical customer environments. For example Lync can be integrated with full PSTN voice. If a provider hasn't thoroughly validated Lync across their voice infrastructure, how can they be sure that the service is functioning as expected or that it is stable? Even more concerning, is how those providers intend to support and trouble-shoot their Lync customers should gremlins appear on the system?

The risks of using a provider that has not properly validated a service, can mean increased deployment lead times or service downtime. In today's service-era, customer's expect providers to deliver on-time, on-budget and to the required scope. Implementation delays or service downtime mean escalated costs, which (subject to scale, complexity and budget restrictions) can jeopardise projects altogether.

Details of the alwaysON validation schedules can't be shared here without comprising our intellectual property. However, it is suffice to say that during the validation process we identified a number of deployment issues that we have resolved, preventing minor and major service irregularities. We are therefore confident that the Lync deployments we manage will be seamless, maintaining the high levels of service that our customers have come to expect from us!

Hosted application solutions are an innovative business model enabling services to be deployed over a private network. With hosted application solutions, organisations do not own, or pay for hardware or software - solutions are delivered on an annuity basis with a relatively low-cost recurring rental.

Hosted (or cloud based) solutions have been around for many years in many different guises! However, this year is touted by Industry analysts such as IDC as the year the end-users will finally get 'cloud curious' and consider a deployment of cloud in one form or other.

So, we'd like to  know whether you have a cloud adoption strategy and if not, why not? Share your thoughts here!

A recent article on computerweekly.com highlighted that the average VPN upgrade costs companies £30,000 with 37% of CIOs rolling out a VPN upgrade once a year.

These headline figures were taken from research conducted on behalf of Virgin Media Business.Key findings from the 500 CIOs surveyed pointed to finance as the biggest challenge “58% said securing finance was the biggest challenge they faced when upgrading their networks… a further 58% said their biggest challenge in 2012 was a tighter IT budget” (http://www.computerweekly.com/news/2240112005/Average-VPN-upgrade-costs-companies-30000)

The main driver for VPN upgrades was cited as a need for businesses to maintain pace with flexible working requirements. This indicates that more organisations are embracing remote/home/mobile working to ensure that their employees can be contacted with ease, wherever they are. As we move to a world where converged solutions are the norm, there is a need for scalable bandwidth.

Here are our top three tips to help you keep your VPN upgrade costs down:

1.            Partner Selection

We understand that organisations tend to ‘stick with what they know’ when it comes to partner selection. Many opt for one of the big players who (granted) may have economies of scale, but who also have a reputation for poor levels of customer service and technological innovation. Our advice is to select a technologically savvy partner who both understands how the communication landscape is changing and who can deliver leading-edge solutions. What’s more, a carrier agnostic partner can often deliver a better selection of connectivity options at any given location – which means that you get the best available connection and price point, irrespective of location.

2.            Communications Strategy

What you need is a plan! Having a strategy (as far as is feasibly possible) for the deployment of your communications, short, medium and long term is a must if you are to prevent unnecessary expenditure on your infrastructure. Get close to the rest of your business and understand what their plans are for the comings months so that you can deliver an infrastructure plan that fits with their needs. It goes without saying that the right partner can help you to plan for needs both now and into the future!

3.            Don’t cut corners!

We know from the research that finance is the biggest challenge for network upgrades – our advice is don’t cut corners … it’s a false economy! As tempting as it is to select the cheapest option, longer term it doesn’t always pay off. Often for a small increase in price, you can have a higher bandwidth service delivered that will be readily scalable – without the need to install a brand new connection. The right partner can help you make sensible choices to enable you to deliver on your communications strategy.

As any IT Manager knows, the biggest barrier to the deployment of ‘new’ technology within a business is user adoption. If end-users are creatures of habit, resisting change even if there are clear benefits to them in doing so, how do we persuade them to adopt new technology so that the business can realise the benefits that justified the technology deployment in the first place?

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An interesting debate has started in the unified communications arena about so-called ‘Social Business’.  For those of you not familiar with this term, social business to us is a concept that recognises the recent changes in the way businesses are communicating. Social business acknowledges the rise in technologically-savvy solutions that enable businesses to transform their communication experience.

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Should providers charge for QoS?

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With a plethora of applications that are becoming increasingly feature-rich and bandwidth hungry, businesses are faced with the challenge of managing suitably high capacity and resilient connectivity to ensure that applications operate at their optimum levels.

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Today’s technology is firmly centred around ‘the cloud’, but to many ‘the cloud’ is a confusing term. Simply put, a cloud is a private network that can be used for the secure exchange of data between multiple locations. But why opt for private cloud infrastructure?

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