I’m going to have the chance to give some direct feedback to the MS product team on Lync next week and item number one for me is the need for the Lync team to de-couple their client from the MS and windows predominance. They have started this move in the conferencing space, making Lync conferencing available via browsers other than IE. They now need to push very hard with their senior managers to allow the full Lync client to be widely available on Apple and Android systems.
If this were to come to fruition lets just take a couple of examples from the last couple of weeks. Cisco announced Umi which costs circa $600 for the unit. If Lync were available as an app in the Android Market they could have provided exactly the same solution with Google TV and a Logitech HD camera for at least half the price. The same would go for the Cuis or the Avaya tablet. If there were a Lync Apple app that could provide voice and VC on Apple’s iOS platform it would make the costs of Cisco and Avaya’s VC systems prohibitive.
The Lync software is expensive and difficult to provide a traditional ROI, it will be even more difficult with the new licensing costs top be introduced this year. This is not a nice to have for the MS Lync team, if they want to sell Lync in large numbers they have to provide a hardware and OS agnostic choice for the Enterprise.
Perhaps the recent accouncment of a MAC Office Communicator client and the shock news that MS have chosen WordPress as their Live blogging platform is highlighting a change of direction by MS, allowing greater diversity to support their individual product lines.
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Please tell me how to connect lync server and client?