Microsoft Lync Server

[ayoward]

Hi Folks,

 

As a bit of a knock on from the ridiculously good deal that we have managed to do with Microsoft for their EES licensing for schools that part of the Yorkshire & Humber Grid for Learning (that's right folks, no one else in the country has such a good deal, not even those southern softies in London Village), I have been playing with Lync. The primary aim of doing this is to see how it could be deployed and utilised in a school and what benefits could be driven from it. We have been looking at a way of hooking it up to existing school telephony systems and we will also be investigating how we could attach it to the school broadband links so we could converge voice and data and perhaps use the JANET links to save even more money.

 

I would be interested therefore to hear from any of you who have deployed Lync already, your experiences in doing so and your reasons behind deployment and any of you who are thinking about it but don't know what you would get out of it/need to justify it etc. I intend at some stage to maybe collate some best practice/case studies/benefits/business cases etc. so I would really appreciate any input you cared to offer.

 

For those of you who don't know what I'm talking about in terms of the MS EES offer that we have brokered, you can read all about it here: Save money on discounted Microsoft licences - YHGfL - YHGfL

 

Cheers,

 

Andrew

[Marshall_IT]

Hi Andrew,

 

I just thought I'd check in to see where you got to with lync as I am also thinking of deploying it in the next 12 months and would like to hear some experiences of it before I jump in.

 

Chris

[ayoward]

Hi Andrew,

 

I just thought I'd check in to see where you got to with lync as I am also thinking of deploying it in the next 12 months and would like to hear some experiences of it before I jump in.

 

Chris

 

Hi Chris,

 

We have our pilot up and running in house now and it is running fine. We have a number of our staff using it now and it is proving to be quite useful.

 

I steered away from trying to implement it myself, I.e build a box and install it and try to configure it when I learned it was included in the new offering in Office 365. Deploying Lync that way took out all the hassle and as an educational establishment you should get it for buttons if not buck shee!!

 

Cheers

 

Andrew

[colacao82]

Hi guys,

 

I am also thinking of deploying Lync.

 

Andrew: What are the specs for the server you have Lync running on because according to MS they look ridiculously high and out of my budget range atm.

 

Thanks