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Perficient’s Matt McGillen on Lync with Redmond Channel Partner

Yesterday, over at Redmond Channel Partner, Scott Bekker wrote about the recent upswing in business around Microsoft Lync. You can read the full article here.
Bekker talks about the recent Lync Conference, and a major takeaway being that Lync is really taking off as customers move past the initial voice pilots to full implementations, where they can begin to take advantage of Lync’s software based approach to telephony. Several partners weighed in, including Perficient’s Matt McGillen:

Matt McGillen, director of Microsoft infrastructure at Perficient Inc., an IT and management consulting company based in St. Louis, Mo., is seeing the same thing. “Demand has increased big time. It started in 2013, and it’s ramped up in Q1 of 2014.”

Scott Bekker went on to discuss improvements in Lync 2013 that contribute to the recent success. He mentions that one critical feature is the ability for Lync to serve as the core PBX to route calls to other, legacy PBXes in branch offices, while conferencing improvements have also been a factor.

McGillen says customer enthusiasm for voice is the biggest driver of the increased business Perficient is seeing. “Part of the reason for our service number doubling from 2012 to 2013 is that people are taking voice seriously. I would say every one of our Lync on-premises deals involves voice in some way,” he says.

At the Lync Conference, Microsoft talked about what’s next for the unified communications platform:

During his kickoff keynote, Gurdeep Singh Pall, Microsoft corporate vice president for Lync and Skype Engineering, tried to rebrand the industry from “unified communications” to “universal communications” and to set a bold user-number prediction.
“The era of universal communications is here to stay. That’s what the next decade is going to be about. It’s going to change your and my life. In fact, 1 billion people in this decade will use Microsoft universal communications,” said Pall,Lync Confetti who recently returned to Lync from other parts of Microsoft’s business.

Partners were very enthusiastic about the future of Lync at the Conference, where Perficient was proud to be the evening event sponsor.
If you are looking to learn more about Lync, and are particularly interested in Lync Online and/or Lync hybrid, join us for a complimentary webinar, Lync Online: How the Cloud is Changing the Way We Communicate, on Wednesday, April 30 at 1 p.m. CT. Perficient Lync experts Keenan Crockett and Trevor Miller will discuss requirements and best practices to help you decide if Lync Online is the right fit for your organization. They’ll also talk about Lync hybrid – from a functionality review and required on-premises infrastructure components, as well as account migration best practices.

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Taylor Rhyne

I work closely with our content management practices and partners at Perficient to lead marketing efforts designed to increase awareness and impact pipeline. I have experience in a variety of industries and have spent the last decade creating multi-faceted campaigns, working to integrate various channels into the plan and maximize effectiveness.

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