Disclaimer: the new version of Lync Server 2013, Skype for Business (SfB) Server 2015, has been released a few weeks ago. Licensing model is the same you had for Lync Server, with companies paying only Front End servers (i.e. the ones hosting user accounts and the core services for your infrastructure). SfB contains some new features, including support for Back End availability based on AlwaysOn groups. I will write a dedicated post asap.
The costs related to Microsoft
Lync are something that I have talked about more than once but this is the
first time I try to summarize information in a single document. I will limit my
reflections to on-premises
organizations, because as I am writing, Lync
Online has no serious support for Enterprise
Voice (i.e. VOIP) and this makes
the Cloud version of Lync less flexible (and somewhat less interesting) than
the more traditional, corporate deployment.
Your House, Your Rules
A starting point for all
cost-related considerations is to understand which kind of service we need.
Lync Server 2013 supports solutions ranging from a single, all-in-one box (with
a mandatory Office Web Apps server
required to share PowerPoint presentations) to hundreds of servers
geographically dispersed. Let us list some parameters.
1. Number of
Users
The first parameter you
have to establish is the number of users that will require Lync services. Lync
2013 Standard Edition (S.E.), the aforementioned single box,
is tested to support up to 5,000 users. Obviously, before you reach the 4,999th
Lync enabled account, it could be a good idea to add a second Front End (the server that delivers core
services to the users) or consider a Lync Enterprise
Edition (E.E.) solution (more
details on the two editions of Lync Server 2013 are explained in the next
paragraph)
2. Required
Availability
Second parameter will be
the required level of availability. If we deem service continuity as required
for any of the Lync features (especially if we are going to use Lync as our
VOIP system), it should be in a high availability deployment. Lync pools
support a feature called Pool Pairing,
if we have at least a couple of Lync 2013 S.E. Front End servers in our infrastructure.
It is not an H.A. solution, but adds resiliency to the solution and it grants some
degree of survivability to the voice users. In a paired pool, using a series of
scripts, we are also able to fail-over and fail-back Lync users, restoring full
functionality for them. A highly available solution requires the E.E. of Lync
Server 2013.
Although there is no difference in the cost of licenses between
S.E and E.E., to use Enterprise Edition you must have at least pool of three
Front Ends connected to a separate SQL Server
database (whereas S.E. uses a collocated SQL Server express at no additional cost).
A dedicated SQL
infrastructure would also require a continuity solution, like clustering or
mirroring. A well-known rule of thumb is if we need to provide high
availability, then we need to remove any potential Single Point of Failure in the design.
Small, remote offices
might also require (at least) voice survivability. For such a scenario, we have
a dedicated implementation of Lync Server 2013, the Survivable Branch Appliances (SBA);
these are less expensive than a full-blown Lync front-end server.
Note:
SQL licensing for Lync Server 2013 has been deep dived in a good post from
fellow MVP Thomas Poett in his blog Lync Server 2013: Lync Backend SQL Server Licensing http://lyncuc.blogspot.it/2014/01/lync-server-2013-lync-backend-sql.html
Availability requirements
have an impact also on point 3 and 5 of this list.
3. Additional
Servers
Lync requires some
additional servers that have no additional cost from the Lync server licensing
point of view but that add costs to acquire the base Operating System, hardware
and so on.
- At least a Lync 2013 Edge server and a reverse proxy are required to make our services available to users
outside our corporate network
- The only Lync role that
requires a Lync server license is the Front End. All other additional roles
like Mediation, Director and the
aforementioned Edge are not subject
to additional Lync server licensing
- At least an Office Web
Apps server is required (as I said before) if PowerPoint sharing is required
- If we have high-availability
requirements, the aforementioned services should be redundant through an edge
pool, a highly-available reverse proxy and an Office Web Apps farm
- Lync integrate with
Exchange Unified Messaging (UM) for services like voice mail. Exchange will
have its own requirements and costs, but we have to keep them in mind if we
require UM-related services
- A Lync 2013 E.E. pool
requires a dedicated load balancer to balance certain type of traffic from the
pool. This may be provided in the form of a physical or virtual appliance.
Remembering SPoF, load balancer should also require an additional standby
device for resiliency.
Note: Every
Lync, Office Web Apps, SQL database and reverse proxy (if you are going to use
a solution based on Windows Server) will require a license for the Operating
System. You could use virtualization rights (Licensing for Virtual Environments https://www.microsoft.com/licensing/about-licensing/virtualization.aspx ) to keep costs down, but this aspect is to be
included in the list
4. Client
Licenses
For the following point, I
will quote my free e-book Microsoft Lync Server 2013: Basic Administration (http://gallery.technet.microsoft.com/office/Lync-Server-2013-Basic-0a86824d )
Lync
requires a CAL (Client Access License) for each user or machine that logs on to
the server. CALs are of three types and each one is entitled to the use of a
part of the features. Access to premium functionality is determined by adoption
of the Standard CAL and then you
have to add supplemental CALS, an Enterprise
CAL and, for some additional features, a third license called Plus CAL (you may think to Enterprise
CAL and Plus CAL as supplemental to the Standard CAL).
-
Standard CAL: offers IM (Instant
Messaging) and Presence, as well as PC-PC audio and video communication
-
Enterprise CAL: the user can use
multi-party Lync meetings (including Gallery
View, a feature allowing up to five active video streams to be displayed at
once)
-
Plus CAL: enables enterprise voice
capabilities
5. Infrastructure
costs
There are
a couple of entries in the bill of materials not directly related to Lync, but
that we have to consider anyway:
- If we are
going to use Lync Server 2013 as our telephony infrastructure, we will require
access to the public telephony system. There are a lot of offers and solutions
from hundreds of providers worldwide, so an exact cost estimation is tough to
outline here. Granting high availability will raise the costs here too, adding
mandatory backup lines in case of a failure on our provider’s side
- Lync
Server 2013 has a high level of security by default and requires digital
certificates to function. While our internal infrastructure can work with a
corporate Certification Authority (C.A.), if we plan to make our Lync
services available to Internet users (and to federate them with external
Unified Communication systems) we have to use commercial certificates from a
well-known, third party C.A. The cost here is not something to underestimate,
because digital certificates will have to be SAN with many alternative names
inside. In addition, the more SIP domains we will manage with our Lync
deployment, the more names we will need in the certificates, and certificate
fees are likely to ramp-up further.
Summarizing
Now, as it is easy to
understand from the previous list, there is no right answer to the starting
question. I will try to focus a few points:
1.High
Availability will raise the costs, as usual
2.Using Lync
Enterprise Voice will add license and infrastructure costs (as well as making
H.A. almost mandatory)
3.The number of users and their level of access
to Lync’s features will impact budget both for the deployment sizing and for
the needed client licenses
4.The bulk part
of the expenditure items related to a Lync deployment are not related to Lync
server licensing, but to the other voices we have seen
Alessio Giombini contributed to this review.
Disclosure: I am a real user, and this review is based on my own experience and opinions.
Hi Alin.
As you easily understand, I can not answer because the information I have are under a NDA.
However things move always so fast that you will not have to wait too much for an official answer on this topic from Microsoft :-)