Microsoft wants to be your phone company, at least for voice Microsoft wants to become your phone company, at least for for voice. Redmond's new ambitions emerged on Monday with the announcement of just how its bringing together the telephony bits it used to call Lync and Skype. Microsoft will soon offer a cloudy PBX, allowing connection of calls between the public switched telephone …
Perhaps your pals in the NSA etc?
Why would any business sign up for this knowing that their data would be syphoned off to parts unknown
IMHO this ranks up there with the Italians monitoring PS4 networks as the stupidest idea of the year.
Sadly a good few businesses will sign up and become part of the new expanded MSN collective.
"Why would any business sign up for this knowing that their data would be syphoned off to parts unknown"
They'd make a rational business decision. Rather than a foil-hat privacy decision.
Chances are their calls are routed all over the place at the moment anyway. So making an informed risk analysis and coming down in favour of this MS service is probably a shoo-in.
There are enough cloud telephone exchange VOIP PBXs out there at the moment. No problems with EU in doing that.
We looked at it last year, but it worked out about 4 times more expensive per year than going with our exsiting telco and a local software VOIP-PBX!
Given that MS are opening co-hosted data centers in Germany to get around Safe Harbour - data stays in Europe and is under the care of local providers, MS and its employees have no direct access to the servers or data.
I've spoken to various admins who fell into the telecoms world due to OCS/Lync/Skype for Business.
They all thought telecoms would be a simple addition to their skill set. Boy did they learn the hard way!
Telecoms is not as simple as it seems. Plus, dealing with people like BT, VIrgin, etc. every day saps your will to live far too quickly.
The problem is that most big companies in that business care much more about certifications than getting their SIP stacks to work properly.
With decent kit and decent VoIP providers setting up a line with DDI is no more effort than choosing the company in a drop down field and entering your username your password and your number range.
With decent kit and decent VoIP providers setting up a line with DDI is no more effort than choosing the company in a drop down field and entering your username your password and your number range.
Which tosses a soft ball into their Channel Partners court to be registered. That's the people that will handle the less than first rate enterprise accounts. Frankly, what with all the changes in their engagements, I feel for them. Not enough to want to join them, though.
Can't see them getting much traction until they get serious about OS X. Those of us on Macs (I'm not a fanboi - I need to develop for iOS) are still using the wonderful Lync 2011; the wonder being that this was deemed suitable for release in 2011, and hasn't been fixed yet.
There may not be huge number of Mac users, but lots of the decision makers love there shiny Macs, and a business solution kind of has to reach everyone.
"Can't see them getting much traction until they get serious about OS X"
Just LOL. You realise that Lync is one of Microsoft's fastest growing business segments - and they are currently wiping the floor with Cisco?
"There may not be huge number of Mac users"
Exactly.
"but lots of the decision makers love there shiny Macs"
Not many IT decision makers, and it's "their". You can give them a Lync handset if they can't use a proper computer.
You realise that Lync is one of Microsoft's fastest growing business segments - and they are currently wiping the floor with Cisco?
How much is because people are buying Skype for Business licenses to use Skype for Business, and how much is because they're being given Skype for Business licenses as part of a Microsoft license bundle?
"and how much is because they're being given Skype for Business licenses as part of a Microsoft license bundle?"
Zero for the PABX side as far as I am aware - the only licences to use Lync Enterprise Voice are specifically for Lync. It doesn't come in bundles like ECAL for instance - you only get Lync Standard or Lync Enterprise - not the Voice license.
Failed connections
Dropped connections
Crosstalk with other calls (how the fsck is that even possible, yet it happens)
Weekly app improvements that improve ad delivery but rarely anything else.
...and top of range pricing for pstn calling!
If the question was "how do we make calling buggier" Skype is the answer ;)
> Lync ... actually works and is good.
Agreed that SKype is dire, and far worse since "Back Door Man" (apologies to the Doors, for whom it meant something quite different) engulfed it. But I definitely don't agree about Lync, now with the logo (but nothing else) changed to read "Skype For Business" sometimes.
We use Lync here, or, should I say, try, struggle, and generally fail to use it here. Is there anything quite so odd as being told that you've missed a call whilst still in the middle of that call? Par for the course with Lync, evidently.
"Is there anything quite so odd as being told that you've missed a call whilst still in the middle of that call? Par for the course with Lync, "
It is actually Exchange UM that is sending out this notification, not Lync.
You can disable the missed call notification globally in the Exchange UM Mailbox Policy.
My experience of Skype has been largely poor. Poor sound and picture quality, if a picture even appears at all, and constant breaks, leading to someone saying 'Lets just do a conference call'. I guess I need more bandwidth, but it's been a bad experience in techie London offices as well as my little house.
I'd second that. But I don't think it's bandwidth at the user end. It's either my corporate IT team have specified a really narrow data pipe somewhere in their infrastructure, and/or Microsoft doing the same thing with theirs.
Either way, Lync is a poor solution as implemented, even though it ought to work very well.
Deep integration between a cloudy PBX, a huge softphone ecosystem spanning the majority of computing devices, the PSTN and cloudy productivity apps is novel
It isn't.
Managed Asterisk instances have been going for many years - this is commonplace stuff. I used to be a reseller, but gave it up when I realised how many customers I had to get to make any proper money.
Integration with productivity apps? The Snom series of SIP phones has full eventing for exactly that purpose. I don't know if the ones I've still got in stock are on sale any more...
Vic.
So, to rehash previous, this has nothing to do with Skype, but is the new Lync. Also, I've been using this for like 3 months at my organization and it's awesome. Yeah, metadata and logs can be furnished without your knowledge but from the perspective of just making stuff work and non-state-sponsored attacks, it's fantastic.
No hint on the costs of connecting to the regular phone system then. My business has used open-source VoIP since 2005 and since then never paid more than 1p per minute anywhere in the world and usually considerably less and has had the benefit of local point of presences.
When Office 365 was originally launched it offered connections to the telephone system. I was staggered to find that as a UK business the only options offered were the likes of BT at 10p per minute. Extortionate pricing and only a UK point of presence. What a disaster.
So with these credentials and given the list of 'partners' listed in the article I have little confidence that Microsoft has upped its game. My expectation is that Microsoft and partners like BT will want to turn the clock back to a time when phone calls were outrageously expensive and inflexible. Microsoft has to recover the $8.5bn it paid for Skype some how.
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