Written by A common question about Lync Online (and the other Office 365 products too, but this post is Lync-centric) is “how is this different from the on-premises solution?” And there is a comprehensive feature comparison available at the Office 365 Community site, but usually the next question I get is “yeah yeah, but what does that really mean for me?”
So here’s a shortlist of the more pertinant features that you don’t get with Lync Online.
- PSTN calling (incoming or outgoing)
- PBX integration
- Advanced call handling (hold, redirection, park)
- IP Phone support (USB only)
- Analog line support (eg. fax)
- Response groups (ie. Direct inbound call to a recipient group)
- Persistent group chat
- Skill search from SharePoint (either on-premise or online)
- Client-side recording
- Dial-in conferencing
- Interop with on-premise video conferencing systems (eg. Polycom suites)
- QoS
- Quality of Experience Reporting
This usually leads to a question like, “ok, so what do they have in common then?”
So for completeness, here’s some of the more popular things you can do with both versions of the product.
- PC-to-PC audio/video
- Address book search
- IMPresence
- Office application integration (click-to-chat)
- Federation with Lync Online, Lync On-Premise, and OCS On-Premise
- Application/Desktop/Whiteboard/Presentation sharing
- Online Meetings
- Guest attendees (via rich client and web client)
- Roundtable support
- Meeting lobby
Hope that’s helpful. Might add SharePoint Online and Exchange Online comparisons too.
Lync looks wonderful and it is wonderful. But for small business it”s so out of the picture regarding complexity of installation, high cost of requirements (at least 3 server licenses plus resources for 3 servers, more fixed IP addresses, certificates, and so on) it”s sad. Especially compounded by the discontinuing of Microsoft”s amazing Response Point product. I wish that hadn”t been done until they had a smooth, smaller version of Lync to replace RP. Lync Online is awesome, and a great “first step”. I do hope that calling to PSTN from Lync Online (hello Skype?) and receiving calls into it becomes a reality very soon; that would provide a solution for small business that is easy, affordable, and very low maintenance.
Take a look at: http://www.activecommunications.nl/en_nl/unified-communications
The ACS Lync appliance solution takes away all complexity (consolidating server roles, no AD changes – plug-and-play install).