Second Lync Conference: done! Once again I had the chance to attend this year’s edition which was held a few weeks ago at the Aria Hotel Resort conference center. This is the most important event of the year for all members of the Microsoft UC ecosystem, a great opportunity to talk to Microsoft teams and customers, as well as partners and MVPs.
Like last year, rich content was presented across more than 170 sessions and announcements around the future of Lync and Skype and development as well!
After reviewing the situation since the launch of LCS ten years ago, Gurdeep Singh Pall and Derek Burney introduced Microsoft’s vision around unified communications, or rather “universal communications”.
A few new features around Lync and Skype were introduced, with some already available:
Lync Mobile
· Voice command in Lync Mobile on Windows Phone: Based on the Windows Phone 8 speech recognition features, you can automatically join a Lync Meeting. As a reminder, mobile clients are updated once every quarter.
· Lync Mobile on Android tablet will be available on Google Play at the end of June
· Anonymous access from mobile client on Windows Phone, iOS and Windows 8 allows you to invite anyone to join a meeting even if they don’t have a Lync account
· Content Sharing like Powerpoint on iPhone: the app offers the same experience as the desktop client
Lync Modern UI
· Answer calls directly from lock screen
· Automatic resize of client and content in spilt screen mode
Interoperability
· Lync and Skype Video Connectivity
· Interoperability with CISCO/Tandberg VTC: Videoconferencing tools integrated natively in Lync Meeting without the need for a specific gateway
Lync Online
· PSTN calls in cloud system
· Large Meeting (more than 1,000 participants)
API
· Media Integration in web portal: Most probably the one feature I had been waiting for the most! Written in Javascript, there’s going to be a massive number of usage scenarios.
After reviewing the new features, the last part of the keynote presentation was dedicated to the future of these technologies at Microsoft:
“Close this decade by saying the future of unified communications that we had predicted 10 years ago has come […] What is the next future?”
That is a good transition to the main ideas of this vision.
· “Work & Life“: The time of “don’t bring work at home” is over.
· “Social” to work with all the people that I need
· “Devices”: Number of devices per person is growing
· “Sync & Async“: Convergence of communication tools like IM, Video, Text Messaging, etc.
· “Cloud”
These five themes require changes such as:
· Consistent Experience: Using software as if you were at home, as a result users are more productive and do not need a lot of training
· Context and Application Intelligence: Introduce more intelligence and context in all the tools we use every day
· All Devices
· Video Everywhere: Connect with anyone anywhere through video
· Global Reach through Cloud: Find all data (Pictures, Videos, Files) from the cloud
These new orientations will enable the transition to a new world – Universal Communications. The future looks bright:”1 billion people in this decade will use Microsoft Universal Communications”. Here’s an example:
To conclude, lots of subjects were addressed during this keynote and all along the 4 days there. We achieved a lot of good stuff over the past few years and the next decade will be exciting 🙂
I ’ll come back to you with more details on all major announcements around Lync development in my next post.
You can watch the whole keynote at www.lyncconf.com. The sessions are only available to attendees, but some are published to the Microsoft Lync youtube channel on a regular basis.
Stay tuned!
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