microsoft Lync alternative

Microsoft Lync, previously Office Communicator (OCS), has steadily gained market share and now dominates enterprise IM beating out your favorite alternative such as IBM Sametime or Cisco Jabber/Unified Communication. This is because the Microsoft team has built a very good product and is strong on business execution. (For example, Bill Gates and Steve Ballmer’s high profile visit to the Singapore Government a few years ago got the entire government switched over from IBM to Microsoft!) In addition to IM, Lync also provides video conference and screen share. However, deploying Lync video conference, especially for group video conference, may be something you want to avoid. Wainhouse senior analyst Bill Haskins explains, “The step from Lync as an instant messaging engine to Lync as a conferencing engine and Lync as a PBX, those incremental steps add almost exponential layers of complexity to IT organizations.” It doesn’t have to be that way, though. VSee is a simple, hassle-free alternative that makes secure IM and video easy for everyone involved.

VSee Advantages Over Microsoft Lync

• • Easy to deploy
  • Easy to do multiparty group video conference
  • Easy to have secure communication between enterprises

Scalability

VSee makes deployment easy unlike Lync which requires “specific equipment and gateways” (i.e. server after server after server). Carefully placing these elements between your network and the outside network to avoid congestion while maintaining security makes video conferencing extraordinarily complicated. In contrast, VSee only has a directory server for managing presence, encryption, and call signaling, and a relay server for http(s) tunneling. Even when VSee operates the directory and relay servers for the enterprises, VSee provides a private management portal so that enterprise IT can precisely control the VSee clients within its network.

Simple and fast group video

VSee is powerful because it’s simple for anyone to work together face to face. But for Lync users, the decision to even allow group video is in the hands of the enterprise IT since the setup so complex. And chances are it’s not allowed!

This simplicity also extends to VSee work tools. You can quickly go from a convoluted IM discussion to a face-to-face video call with one click. Anyone can start a group call no matter which company he or she is with:

1. With a single click you can instantly bring everyone into a meeting.
2. With another click, you can instantly share any application.
3. A third click allows anyone in the group to mark up the shared screen. No need to pass control or ask permissions! Or you can pass a file with an intuitive drag and drop onto the receiver’s video window!

Don’t let yourself get stuck with Lync when VSee let’s you work together over video as easy as 1-2-3!

Video chat with your customers and partners

While Lync provides methods to federate your enterprise, Lync Federation infrastructure with an outside customer, partner, or a vendor, is complicated and requires a complex setup. Thus most companies have set up their Lync as internal-only communication. VSee, on the other hand, is designed to allow simple and secure video chat with your customers and partners. Your enterprise IT can selectively turn off Vsee capabilities such as disabling recording, file send, etc., so that getting things done with someone outside your company can be easy and secure.

Why use Microsoft Lync?

Lync is a well designed product that unifies several key office communication mediums – voice, IM, and video. Lync also integrates seamlessly with Outlook. An impressed Gartner reports “Lync 2010 offers a full suite of UC functionality, and Microsoft continues to improve and evolve its offering with each release. The vendor offers integrations with Office, SharePoint, Exchange and Skype…. The Lync partner ecosystem continues to grow at a rapid pace.”

Also with Skype integration into Lync and Online Lync, you have a more cloud-like UC option on the horizon.

Related articles

Some Lync Deployments ‘Stuck In Pilot Phase’
(eWeek)
Microsoft Lync Deployments ‘Stuck in the Pilot Phase’
(FierceEnterpriseCommunications)
2012 Magic Quadrant for Unified Communications
(Gartner) – evaluations of UI systems A-Z including Avaya, Cisco, IBM, and Huawei
Microsoft Lync: A Video Conferencing Deployment Nightmare
(VSee blog)
Microsoft Starts Integrating Skype Into Office
(TechCrunch)
More on the Lync-Skype Integration
(The Lync Team Blog)

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Last updated: Nov 14, 2012