Presence and Real-Time Communications Overview

The Lync products deliver major updates to Microsoft’s products for presence, instant messaging (IM), voice, and other real-time communications. Lync Server 2010 is the successor to Communications Server and delivers many voice and management improvements, enabling it to fully replace, rather than augment, a private branch exchange (PBX) business phone system. Lync 2010 replaces two existing client applications—Live Meeting (for Web conferencing) and Communicator (for presence, IM, voice, and other kinds of communication)—although the Lync client is not supported with earlier versions of the server.

Lync Online, a Microsoft-hosted communications service based on Lync Server 2010, is planned with the Office 365 service suite in mid-2011. Lync Online will replace two existing Microsoft-hosted services, the Live Meeting Web conferencing service and the Communications Online service for presence, IM, and two-way voice, video, and application-sharing sessions. (Communications Online and Live Meeting customers are to be migrated to Lync Online by the end of 2012.) The initial version of Lync Online will not enable voice calls with PBXs and the public telephone network. Telephony connections are planned for a later version, which will probably not appear until 2012 at the earliest.