Microsoft Lync

[CAWJames]

Afternoon all,

We are looking for a video conferencing system to take us into the realms of blended learning and staff communication to cancel out all the other stuff like fuel for getting to meetings etc.

We have tried BigBlueButton, but SMT are not happy with the voice aspect of it, in their view it is just not good enough. I am hoping to use this in the future when 1.x etc come out, but at the moment, it just isnt passing muster.

We licence the Enterprise CAL suite, which included Lync server cals, so I am asking what is Lync? and can it do a simple video conference and collaboration? or is just too 'enterprise'?

Do we need proper software, or for example, can I use Office 2010 for staff and some kind of web connector for external?

What licencing other than the CAL do we need, if this sound like a good solution?

Thanks

James

(I will drag this college into the 21st century! We didn't even have wi-fi until I came along a year or so ago!)

[GrumbleDook]

I would have a look at a number of the post on the MS UK Education blog Microsoft UK Schools blog - Site Home - MSDN Blogs which has a number of good posts including examples of use of Lync.

[penfold_99]

There are 2 ways for encoding audio on BigBlueButton, each with its own benefits but can get out of sync when under load. it is possible to offload the audio to a 2nd server which will improve things as the handling of multi audio streams consumes the CPU, which would be under high load already handling the multiple video streams on a single server.

[CAWJames]

The current server is a dual Xeon Dell 2950, admittedly with only a couple of gigs of ram, but we are literally getting bad audio from a point to point session, ie only 2 people, one on a BT Leased line - 100mbit, and the other on a BT EFM - 4mbit.

I even tried loading up a VM with 12GB of RAM and a couple of vCPU's and still the audio was choppy and out of sync.

Even had the user wear a madonna headset!!

[Sylv3r]

JANET recently launched desktop conference software - never used it so can't recomend or criticise it.

Desktop Videoconferencing

[Sandman]

Lync site is a pretty good source of info tbh - Business Grade Instant Messaging and Presence - Microsoft Lync

[CAWJames]

Does anyone know pricing on Lync server?

Thanks

James

[Sandman]

Lync server pricing is listed here: Pricing and Licensing Options for Microsoft Lync 2010

[CAWJames]

Thanks for the link, but that's not OVS/EES pricing, that's retail, as far as i now.

Thanks again

James