Chapter 3. Feature Overview and Benefits of Microsoft Lync Server 2013

Lync Server is a difficult product to summarize in a single phrase, but it can be considered a secure, flexible, and extensible collaboration platform. From many people’s perspective, it was simply considered Microsoft’s instant messaging (IM) product since its inception. However, Lync Server has transformed into a complete Unified Communications (UC) solution for business that encompasses presence, IM, web conferencing, audio/video (A/V) conferencing, and complete Voice over IP (VoIP) services. Lync Server is the leading real-time collaboration platform available in the market today.

This chapter is a high-level overview of what Lync Server 2013 provides to an organization. Its features can be deployed together or in pieces, as determined by business requirements. It seamlessly integrates with other Microsoft products including Office, SharePoint, and Exchange. This flexibility is exactly what makes the product so compelling and beneficial to organizations. Because this chapter provides a complete overview covering topics both new and unchanged, if you’re a Lync veteran you might find a bit of this redundant, but we also want to welcome our new Lync administrators to the fold!