Comparing Lync Online with Lync Server On-Premises

Lync Online, Microsoft’s hosted communication and conferencing service, offers most of the features of the Lync on-premises product, including instant messaging (IM), presence, voice and video calling, application sharing, and Web conferencing. Lync Online is attractive because it requires less upfront investment than deploying Lync Server on-premises. For Lync on-premises customers, a coexistence option enables organizations to deploy a hybrid environment or migrate to Lync Online in a more controlled manner. However, limited Web conferencing, policy controls, and voice features may hinder Lync Online adoption, and the online version’s rapid deployment cadence will likely require frequent client upgrades.

Lync Online Service Plans

This report focuses on the functionality of the Lync Online multitenant service (simply called Lync Online), as compared to Lync Server on-premises. (See the chart “Lync Online and Lync Server On-Premises“.) Most customers will use the Lync Online multitenant offering, which uses shared hardware running in a Microsoft data center to support multiple customers, called tenants. It replaced Microsoft’s Communications Online Standard service as well as the Live Meeting Web conferencing service and is the service sold to most Office 365 customers.