WIXLIB

INTEGRATIONIS KEYHOMEEDITOR’S NOTESWITCHING TO LYNC:WHO CAN HUMTHIS COMPLEX TUNE?HOW CAN MS LYNCPROVE ITS VALUE?INTEGRATION IS KEYDECIDING FACTORSIN THE LYNC VS. CISCODEBATE7Lync adoption appears to be strongest inNorth America, where—as noted in Chapter1—a Nemertes survey shows growing adoptionof Lync as a phone replacement among small,medium and large companies. But Microsoftand Cisco are expected to have equal market share in North America soon, followed byAvaya.The majority of companies using Lync todayalready have licenses for lots of Microsoft software, analysts say. Most of these customers areusing Lync for instant messaging and Web conferencing from the desktop.Cardinal Health, a 101 billion healthcareservices company based in Dublin, Ohio, racksup 7 million minutes of Web conferencing onLync each month.“Lync has become almost impossible to livewithout as far as our day-to-day operations,”says Ryan Ritter, manager of unified communications at Cardinal Health.The company, with 24,000 employees, hasCisco, Avaya, Nortel and Siemens PBX systems supporting conventional desk phones in300 offices and warehouses in and outside theU.S. Over the next three years, Cardinal HealthA NEW TUNE FOR TELEPHONY? WHAT MS LYNC REALLY MEANSplans to use Lync 2013 as a replacement for allits PBX systems, except those that route callssolely within a facility, Ritter says.To get high-quality audio and Web conferencing with Lync today, Cardinal uses AcmePacket’s session border controller (SBC) toHow well Lync does as a replacement for a traditional telephonysystem depends as much onMicrosoft partners as on thesoftware maker’s product.connect Lync to Verizon Business’ SessionInitiation Protocol (SIP) trunking service. TheIP PBX also connects to the SBC, providinginteroperability between Lync, the IP PBX andthe SIP trunks, as well as security and business-quality voice and video.The company expects to expand its use ofLync from voice and messaging to video conferencing on a large screen in a meeting room.To do so, Cardinal Health will need to workwith one of Microsoft’s technology partners tosupply the equipment and integration. Ritter

INTEGRATIONIS KEYHOMEand his team are testing products from multiplevendors, including interactive whiteboard vendor SMART Technologies and combined products from Polycom and Crestron Electronics,which makes audio-video control systems forhomes and businesses.EDITOR’S NOTESWITCHING TO LYNC:WHO CAN HUMTHIS COMPLEX TUNE?HOW CAN MS LYNCPROVE ITS VALUE?INTEGRATION IS KEYDECIDING FACTORSIN THE LYNC VS. CISCODEBATE8INTEGRATION VITAL TO LYNC SUCCESSHow well Lync does as a replacement for a traditional telephony system depends as much onMicrosoft partners as on the software maker’sown product. That’s because Lync requires anIP-based telephone system to route calls to andfrom the public switched telephone network.Business-consulting firm BlumShapiro,based in Boston, plans to test Lync as a replacement for its Mitel IP PBX, which serves 400employees in five offices in Connecticut, Massachusetts and Rhode Island.The test requires SIP trunking servicesfrom a provider such as AT&T or EarthLink toreplace the firm’s T1 and ISDN PRI lines, saysMark Schwartz, chief information officer atBlumShapiro. In addition, the company is planning to use an SBC from AudioCodes and aA NEW TUNE FOR TELEPHONY? WHAT MS LYNC REALLY MEANShardware load balancer from KEMP Technologies. The load balancer moves traffic to different servers if one suddenly goes offline.The small group of employees in the test willuse Lync as a phone system and a collaborationplatform, Schwartz says. If the pilot works out,then BlumShapiro would need 12 to 18 monthsto roll out the system to everyone.Systems integrator DynTek will helpBlumShapiro set up the system, but onceit’s deployed, Schwartz and his team plan tohandle most of the maintenance—a departurefrom outsourcing the ongoing managementof its Mitel system to another provider, TotalCommunications.“We may have to, here and there, bring insomebody for some assistance. But as a generalrule, we’re going to be able to support Lync,”Schwartz says. “The annual maintenance costs,management costs and frustration in dealingwith a vendor will kind of all go away.”Lync won’t be less expensive than stickingwith Mitel and going with its competing product, Schwartz says. “I’d say it’s a lot closer toequal, but we’re going to get a lot more value, alot more features.”

INTEGRATIONIS KEYHOMEEDITOR’S NOTESWITCHING TO LYNC:WHO CAN HUMTHIS COMPLEX TUNE?HOW CAN MS LYNCPROVE ITS VALUE?As a general rule, Lync’s total cost of operation tends to be about two times more thanCisco or Avaya, says Irwin Lazar, vice presidentand service director at Nemertes Research.That’s because Lync requires the integration ofdifferent platforms from multiple vendors.Lync’s total cost of operation isabout two times more than Ciscoor Avaya because it requires theintegration of different platformsfrom multiple vendors.INTEGRATION IS KEYDECIDING FACTORSIN THE LYNC VS. CISCODEBATE9Sticking with Avaya or Cisco for telephonyand adding their UC and collaboration clientson top keeps everything simple by eliminatingthe need for integration and running separateplatforms. The two companies’ partner ecosystems are currently ahead of Microsoft’s in thisregard as well.“The maturity levels of the [systems integrators] that are providing Lync services are stillnot quite there,” Lazar says. “Because they’reA NEW TUNE FOR TELEPHONY? WHAT MS LYNC REALLY MEANSstill a little on the new side, they’re still defining processes, getting up to speed on trainingand support, and so on.”While the integration challenge “certainlygives them pause,” enterprises that can hireHewlett-Packard, AT&T or Verizon to handlethe integration and then manage the hybridLync-telephony platform will find the cost ofoperations will be much lower, Lazar says.BlumShapiro found that Lync 2013 hadimprovements “under the hood” that werepivotal to the firm considering it as a PBXreplacement. The enhancements included tightintegration with Windows Server 2012 andMicrosoft’s Hyper-V virtualization platform,enabling Schwartz to more easily add Lyncservers as the number of employees grows andto route communications from one server to theother during outages or maintenance windows.“With Server 2012 and Hyper-V, we can create a very stable, highly available and robustserver infrastructure to be able to host anapplication like Lync that’s pretty demanding,”he says. —Antone Gonsalves

DECIDINGFACTORSHOMEEDITOR’S NOTESWITCHING TO LYNC:WHO CAN HUMTHIS COMPLEX TUNE?HOW CAN MS LYNCPROVE ITS VALUE?INTEGRATION IS KEYDECIDING FACTORSIN THE LYNC VS. CISCODEBATE10The Deciding Factors in the Lync vs. Cisco DebateWhen evaluating unified communications vendors, it’s tempting to think thatmerely comparing product spec sheets or completing isolated beta tests will point to an obvious winner. And while the lack of a specificfeature may be an automatic deal-breaker forIT shops with explicit needs, one of the biggest factors in whether a deployment succeedshas little to do with the shiny new UC platformbeing considered.It’s the investments an enterprise has alreadymade with a vendor outside of UC that ofteninfluence how readily users will adopt newUC tools or how smoothly administrators willintegrate and manage the deployment. In otherwords, users who are already familiar withMicrosoft Office applications may be morelikely to use Microsoft Lync Server to communicate and collaborate. Alternatively, anIT shop with a large Cisco Systems networkmay discover that back-end integration andA NEW TUNE FOR TELEPHONY? WHAT MS LYNC REALLY MEANSmanagement is much simpler with Cisco’s UCofferings.For many UC pros, vendor selection comesdown to Cisco UC versus Microsoft Lync, thetwo biggest names in the UC market. Choosingbetween them requires a broader, more strategic evaluation process than comparing them byfeature sets alone.Robert Gagne, manager of systems operations and security at DMT Development Systems Group, a Canadian software developerfor the automotive industry, is consideringmigrating away from Citrix’s GoToMeeting,which DMT’s employees use for internal meetings and demos for customers. Users oftenneed help setting up GoToMeeting sessions,and while five minutes of troubleshooting hereand there may not seem significant, those “fiveminutes” can build up to dozens of hours inlost productivity over the course of a year, hesaid.

DECIDINGFACTORSHOMEEDITOR’S NOTESWITCHING TO LYNC:WHO CAN HUMTHIS COMPLEX TUNE?Gagne is leaning toward Lync primarilybecause users want a tighter integration withother Microsoft tools for collaboration; moreover, there isn’t a substantial-enough investment in Cisco infrastructure at DMT to givethe Cisco UC platform any edge.“Our guys are like, ‘If I can do that throughOutlook—booking the meeting and sendingthe invite—that’s going to make it so mucheasier,’” Gagne said. “You have to do that [typeof] business case analysis.”HOW CAN MS LYNCPROVE ITS VALUE?INTEGRATION IS KEYDECIDING FACTORSIN THE LYNC VS. CISCODEBATEDON’T FORGET OPERATIONAL EXPENSESFor enterprises that have made equally significant investments in both Cisco and Microsoft,identifying the better fit for a UC strategypartly comes down to end user preference.“If your user base is more familiar with acertain set of applications, that may mean thatone is better over the other,” said Kevin Kieller,a partner at enableUC, a unified communications consultancy and integrator based inOakville, Ontario. He was speaking at InteropNew York in October 2013 on the panel “Microsoft Lync vs. Cisco: Which Path Should YouChoose?”Selecting the right UC vendor also requirescareful consideration of the operational costs adeployment could incur, he noted.“As much as Cisco and Microsoft like to talkabout their differences, they have very similararchitectures,” said Kieller, who representedthe Microsoft perspective on the panel. “Thesolutions that you [choose] must be alignedto your specific business objective. Whetherit’s Microsoft or Cisco, things like training andchange management are going to be importantfor your success.”Despite having a sizeable presence at theshow, Microsoft declined to send an officialspokesperson to participate in the face-off,according to the session’s organizers.Tom Doria, a program manager in Cisco’scollaboration technology group, offering thecounterpoint for Cisco on the same panel, saidFor enterprises with investments in both Cisco and Microsoft, identifyingthe better fit for a UC strategy can come down to end user preference.11A NEW TUNE FOR TELEPHONY? WHAT MS LYNC REALLY MEANS

DECIDINGFACTORSHOMEEDITOR’S NOTESWITCHING TO LYNC:WHO CAN HUMTHIS COMPLEX TUNE?HOW CAN MS LYNCPROVE ITS VALUE?INTEGRATION IS KEYDECIDING FACTORSIN THE LYNC VS. CISCODEBATEUC pros have to consider the overall infrastructure environment. Enterprises that alreadyuse Cisco for networking, security and mobiledevice management will benefit from greaterautomation on the administration side, hesaid.“When you have IT operational issues, youhave to move things around. You have to create new VLANs, and you have to create newsecurity policies,” Doria said. “If I’m deployinga Microsoft Lync environment, I have todo that manually. If I use Cisco technologiesthat are designed to be recognized and authorized into the network automatically—andthen the network allows me to manage that andcreate my own policies dynamically—there’s anadvantage.”Another point to consider is which IT teamowns the deployment, enableUC’s Kieller said.“I would choose Lync if the apps or serverteam is running the show, because they aremore familiar [with Microsoft],” he said. “Onthe other hand, you might want to chooseCisco if the telecom group is making the call,since most likely they are much more familiarwith Cisco or other traditional PBX providers.”WHERE’S THE USER BENEFIT?In addition to its lack of a networking portfolio,Microsoft doesn’t sell any physical endpointsfor voice or video. The vendor refers customersto specialized partners like Polycom that selldesk phones and video conferencing equipmentinstead. On its own, Lync provides softphonefunctionality and a desktop video-conferencingclient. Meanwhile, its video endpoint interoperability and high-definition video capabilitiesare limited compared to Cisco. However, thedegree to which Microsoft has integrated Lync,SharePoint and Office—and enabled federation between Lync customers—has made it anattractive offering for some enterprises.Cisco has a much stronger heritage in voiceand video—manufacturing its own IP phones,PBXes, room-based video-conferencing unitsThe degree to which Microsoft has integrated Lync, SharePointand Office has made it an attractive offering for some enterprises.12A NEW TUNE FOR TELEPHONY? WHAT MS LYNC REALLY MEANS

DECIDINGFACTORSHOMEEDITOR’S NOTESWITCHING TO LYNC:WHO CAN HUMTHIS COMPLEX TUNE?HOW CAN MS LYNCPROVE ITS VALUE?INTEGRATION IS KEYand immersive telepresence systems—as wellas contact center applications. These productsall benefit from built-in integration, along withCisco’s other offerings for the network anddata center. But like Microsoft, the full benefitsof Cisco’s UC offerings shine in an all-Ciscoinfrastructure environment.Cisco offers some basic integration withOutlook in many of its UC products, but itscommunications and collaboration tools oftensit outside the applications that employees usethe most. That alone can be a sticking point forsome UC pros.DECIDING FACTORSIN THE LYNC VS. CISCODEBATE13A NEW TUNE FOR TELEPHONY? WHAT MS LYNC REALLY MEANS“We took this approach of the total cost ofownership, but we also brought the user benefitinto [our vendor evaluation]. What [applications] were the users using most, and what wasgoing to be the best experience for a user? Andwhen we did all that analysis, we chose Lyncbecause of its deep integration [with] Microsoft Office,” said one IT pro who was in theaudience at the panel discussion. “If the usershave to be trained to do something else or ifthey are not going to use the product, you arenot going to get the full benefit out of it.”—Jessica Scarpati

ABOUTTHEAUTHORSIRWIN LAZAR is the vice president and service directorHOMEEDITOR’S NOTEat Nemertes Research, where he develops and managesresearch projects, develops cost models, conducts strategic seminars and advises clients. Irwin is responsible forbenchmarking the adoption and use of emerging technologies in the enterprise in areas including VoIP, unifiedcommunications, video conferencing, social computing,collaboration and advanced network services.A New Tune for Telephony? What MS Lync Really Meansis a SearchUnifiedCommunications.com e-publication.Kate Gerwig Editorial DirectorRivka Gewirtz Little Executive EditorSWITCHING TO LYNC:WHO CAN HUMTHIS COMPLEX TUNE?HOW CAN MS LYNCPROVE ITS VALUE?ANTONE GONSALVES isa journalist who has coveredgeneral, business and technology news for more than25 years for a wire service, magazines and websites.You can follow him on Twitter at @antoneg.INTEGRATION IS KEYDECIDING FACTORSIN THE LYNC VS. CISCODEBATEJESSICA SCARPATI isfeatures and e-zine editor forTechTarget’s Networking Media group, where sheoversees the editorial direction and production of theNetwork Evolution e-zine. Jessica was previously thesite editor of SearchCloudProvider and, prior to that,was the senior news writer for SearchEnterpriseWAN,SearchTelecom and SearchUnifiedCommunications.Kara Gattine Senior Managing EditorJessica Scarpati Features and E-zine EditorTessa Parmenter Site EditorBrenda L. Horrigan Associate Managing EditorLinda Koury Director of Online DesignNeva Maniscalco Graphic DesignerDoug Olender Senior Vice et275 Grove Street, Newton, MA 02466www.techtarget.com 2014 TechTarget Inc. No part of this publication may be transmitted or reproduced in any form or by any means without written permission from thepublisher. TechTarget reprints are available through The YGS Group.About TechTarget: TechTarget publishes media for information technologyprofessionals. More than 100 focused websites enable quick access to a deepstore of news, advice and analysis about the technologies, products and processes crucial to your job. Our live and virtual events give you direct access toindependent expert commentary and advice. At IT Knowledge Exchange, oursocial community, you can get advice and share solutions with peers and experts.COVER ART: THINKSTOCK14A NEW TUNE FOR TELEPHONY? WHAT MS LYNC REALLY MEANS

IN THE LYNC VS. CISCO DEBATE 7 A NEW TUNE FOR TELEPHONY? WHAT MS LYNC REALLY MEANS INTEGRATION IS KEY Lync adoption appears to be strongest in North America, where—as noted in Chapter 1—a Nemertes survey shows growing adoption of Lync as a phone replacement among small, medium and large companies. But Microsoft