Skype for Business Reviews, Competitors and Pricing

Infrastructure Expert at a comms service provider with 51-200 employees

May 16, 2013

It is easy to integrate with Call Centers and doesn’t need separate appliances or hardware but several aspects have room for improvement

For how long have you used this product?
- 2 years

Which features of this product are most valuable to you?
- VoIP, IM Chat, Conferencing, Mobility

Can you give an example of how this product has improved the way your organization functions?
- Make it easy to communicate between colleagues, partners and even other companies. It is easy to integrate with Call Centers and doesn’t need separate appliances or hardware. It all can be virtualized. It also allows you to call anytime and anywhere from within your PC or Mobile phone.

What areas of this product have room for improvement?
- IM and file transfer, Conferencing, Persistent Chat, Monitoring and Archiving, Quality of voice and video and Mobility.

Did you encounter any issues with deployment, stability or scalability?
- Integration with Office 365 can be difficult sometimes if migrating users from Lync on cloud to Lync on premise.

Did you previously use a different solution and if so, why did you switch?
- We used to have Openfire, but since we are partners of Microsoft and Lync was a unified communication solution for enterprises which gather everything in it. Then we decided to migrate and deployed our first Lync in 2010.

Before choosing this product, did you evaluate other options? If so, which ones?
- No, we have just choose to go for Microsoft Lync and so as many of our enterprise customers who previously had OCS deployed on their premise.

How would you rate the level of customer service and technical support?
- Overall the level of customer service for Lync is good however, for Microsoft Office 365 it has been improved from getting support on forums to exchanging e-mails and even following up on issues by phone calls.

Was the initial setup straightforward or complex? In what ways?
- Initial setup was some how complicated with the edge part as you have to understand the trick of getting two NICs working and routing the traffic on internal NIC to Lync front end while the other NIC which is external has to face the Firewall DMZ lan.

Did you implement through a vendor team or an in-house one? If through a vendor team, how would you rate their level of expertise?
- We have deployed an in-house server and it’s currently still up and running, also we have evaluated the Office 365 and support was extremely good.

What is your ROI on this product?
- Lync has many features that would save your enterprise money, time and effort. Starting with the money, it lessens the cost of communication by using less PSTN lines for VoIP calls when using the Enterprise Voice feature for Lync, It saves you time since you can have conference calls with your clients on Lync using Multiple Conferencing capability along with Multi-Video as well saving the time of going to the customer’s main office for the meeting. Also it can be integrated with other various application servers providing you features which you probably don’t know about yet.

What was your original setup cost for this product and what is your day-to-day cost of using this product?
- Total cost of the project may vary depending on the requirements of the setup, The number of clients who will be using it and what kind of features would they require on it. It may start from $5000 up to $50,000.

What advice would you give to others looking into implementing this product?
- I have recommended Microsoft Lync to one of the customers who had Asterisk and used to have lot of voice quality issue even though they are using the generic audio codecs that are used by majority of VoIP applications. Microsoft Lync uses a different Codec which makes it unique and has better quality in this case.

Disclosure: I am a real user, and this review is based on my own experience and opinions.

it_user6528Infrastructure Expert at a comms service provider with 51-200 employees

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May 16, 2013

Hi Fabrizio,

Yes this review is dedicated to Lync 2010 more than 2013 however, I have migrated to 2013 about few months ago and noticed the big difference and change between both 2010 and 2013. as you mentioned Monitoring and Archiving are now part of the FE but require a separate SQL server. Mobility has been improved that it actually makes you not in need to use your desktop sometimes.

WAC server supports PowerPoint slides share for multi-point conferencing. I have deployed WAC couple of times in dedicated server (Internal) use and had great results.

Overall I can say a lot of my clients were very satisfied about the results.

I think I have to write another review about Lync 2013.

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reviewer938853

Regional Sales Director - India & Middle East at a computer software company with 201-500 employees

Nov 21, 2021

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Straightforward to set up and offers a fast deployment but needs to be user-friendly

Pros and Cons

"The deployment is very fast."

"There are not many options, in terms of some other third-party integration."

What is our primary use case?

We primarily use the solution for business purposes. We use it for virtual meetings.

What is most valuable?

The initial setup is pretty straightforward.

The deployment is very fast.

What needs improvement?

It needs to be easier to use. The product is very heavy. It's very unmanageable. It used to take up a lot of memory of my computer system.

There are not many options, in terms of some other third-party integration. The adoption of Zoom primarily spiked during the pandemic and is sort of better. This solution is now being used much less.

The solution isn't scalable.

For how long have I used the solution?

I've been dealing with the solution for one and a half years so far.

What do I think about the stability of the solution?

The solution is very stable and unmanageable.

What do I think about the scalability of the solution?

The product doesn't really scale all that well.

We have about a hundred users on the solution.

How are customer service and support?

I don't have any experience with technical support. I can't speak to how they are in terms of helpfulness or responsiveness.

Which solution did I use previously and why did I switch?

I'm also familiar with Microsoft Teams or Zoom.

How was the initial setup?

The initial setup is not overly difficult. It's pretty straightforward in general. A company shouldn't have any issues with the process.

The deployment is also quick and only takes a minute or so.

What about the implementation team?

I handled the implementation myself. I didn't need the help of any consultants or integrators.

What's my experience with pricing, setup cost, and licensing?

While it's my understanding that users would need to pay for a license, I have no visibility on the costs involved.

What other advice do I have?

I'd rate the solution at a five out of ten.

I wouldn't really recommend the solution to other users or organizations. I'd rather suggest Zoom or Microsoft Teams, which are better options.

Disclosure: I am a real user, and this review is based on my own experience and opinions.

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it_user4386

Engineer at a tech vendor with 10,001+ employees

Feb 20, 2013

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Very effective communication tool

Valuable Features:

Integration with other MS products such as outlook, OWA, SharePoint Support for various client devices, gateways etc. Support for federation with third party.Lync Client allows users access to presence, instant messaging, voice, audio, video, and Web conferencing

Room for Improvement:

Voice telephony and video calls utilize lots of bandwidth.

Other Advice:

It's is a very good product to have -- a solution for IM, voice telephony and video communication bundled into one.

Disclosure: I am a real user, and this review is based on my own experience and opinions.

it_user4401Developer at a transportation company with 1,001-5,000 employees

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Jan 11, 2014

I agree with you, and I would like to add three pros that Microsoft Lync 2013 has. First one is referring to HD video conferencing, because Lync delivers support for 1080p HD resolution for video conferencing, so participants have a sharp, clear display. Second one refers to mobile apps, because Microsoft has developed Lync mobile apps for Windows Phone, iOS and Android. The Lync mobile apps allow users to instant message, call, or join a Lync meeting from virtually anywhere. And the third pro refers to web app, because Microsoft also introduced a web app for Lync.

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it_user776832

Unified Messaging Consultant at a engineering company with 10,001+ employees

Nov 22, 2017

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The public telephony feature reduces hard phone costs

What is most valuable?

IM
Audio/video
Federation
Public telephony
RGS

The public telephony feature reduces hard phone costs and RGS is like a call centre feature.

How has it helped my organization?

Reduced the capital cost on the hard phone.

What needs improvement?

End user enhancement: There are few codes in the back-end from the vendor which need to improve, be enhanced, like application sharing for remote party to access the machine, and can be easily accessed by tools, such as CAD design. This is one of the examples.

For how long have I used the solution?

Nine years starting from its 2005 version.

What do I think about the stability of the solution?

There have been a few issues working with vendor.

How are customer service and technical support?

An eight out of 10.

Which solution did I use previously and why did I switch?

No.

How was the initial setup?

It will depend on the B2B setup.

What's my experience with pricing, setup cost, and licensing?

It is okay for a large environment.

What other advice do I have?

Think about other parameters, such as monitoring, if you invest in a Microsoft-based monitoring solution.

Disclosure: I am a real user, and this review is based on my own experience and opinions.

GlobalSe6644

Global Service Leader - Unified Communications and Collaboration at a manufacturing company with 10,001+ employees

Aug 23, 2017

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P2P audio video calls and conferencing add value

What is most valuable?

IM, Presence, P2P audio video calls, Conferencing.

How has it helped my organization?

Optimizes our network, encourages adoption, standardizes optimized headsets, strong change management, mobility.

What needs improvement?

Make the Skype applications work with unified end user computing. For example, so that Apple headsets can be used. Instead of optimizing some headsets, it would be helpful to get into OS to optimize the application.

For how long have I used the solution?

Five years.

What do I think about the stability of the solution?

Yes.

What do I think about the scalability of the solution?

Yes.

How are customer service and technical support?

Five out of 10.

Which solution did I use previously and why did I switch?

No.

How was the initial setup?

Complex.

What's my experience with pricing, setup cost, and licensing?

It depends on your infrastructure. There is value in using Skype only when your organization is Microsoft shop.

Which other solutions did I evaluate?

Cisco.

What other advice do I have?

Look at your end users and computing needs and find a suitable solution for them.

Disclosure: I am a real user, and this review is based on my own experience and opinions.

it_user1020

Head of Data Center at a tech company with 51-200 employees

Dec 1, 2012

Question regarding Microsoft's Lync server

Hi,

I have been tasked to prepare a plan to upgrade our analogue telephone system into a full-IP unified communications system. Since we have a subscription-based licensing deal with Microsoft, Microsoft's Lync server offers a compelling product for this purpose.

For those of you who have experience using this as your IP communications system, I would like to know your experiences with using this product. Any comment or suggestion would be highly appreciated.

Francis

Disclosure: I am a real user, and this review is based on my own experience and opinions.

it_user3483Senior Consultant at Unify Square

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Jan 5, 2013

Hi Francis.
It is a really good product (I am sort of Lync fanboy :-D ) and Lync gives a lot of features that other product do not have.
Also, it gives an extremely powerful and easy to use client interface (voice operatons like call parking and call forward, for a example, are really simple to make).

The administrative part is not too difficult and the high integration with Active Directory, Exchange and SharePoint is something you will love if you have the aforementioned products in your company.

The costs, however, are not so low.
a) You have to pay client licenses and they are more costly for enterprise voice
b) You have to pay for every single frontend server and if you use Lync voice you need more than one f.e. for high availability (we want our telephones alway up and running, don't we ? :-P )