Microsoft Lync 2013 Unified Communications: From Telephony to Real-time Communication in the Digital Age -- Table of Contents -- Microsoft Lync 2013 Unified Communications: From Telephony to Real-time Communication in the Digital Age -- Credits -- About the Author -- About the Reviewers -- www.PacktPub.com -- Support files, eBooks, discount offers and more -- Why Subscribe? -- Free Access for Packt account holders -- Instant Updates on New Packt Books -- Preface -- What this book covers -- Who this book is for -- Conventions -- Reader feedback -- Customer support -- Errata -- Piracy -- Questions -- 1. Innovation of Communication and Information Technologies -- Defining communication -- What changed the communication industry? -- Understanding modern business communication needs -- Evolution of communication tools -- Increasing the number of ways to reach a person -- Benefits of UC -- Introducing cloud services in IT and telecommunication -- Summary -- 2. Information Technology Meets Knowledge Management -- Microsoft SharePoint Server as a knowledge platform -- Microsoft SharePoint as FAQ, collaboration, and best practice platform -- YouTube as a video knowledge portal -- A company's central intranet portal and team sites on Microsoft SharePoint -- From skill search and real-time communication to mobile integration -- Summary -- 3. Business Cooperation in the World of the World Wide Web -- What technological barriers are we talking about? -- Understanding the unified communications umbrella -- Learning about My Site -- Instant messaging and chat -- Knowing the modular IT platform -- Summary -- 4. Value and Potential for End Users -- Technology supports our daily life -- Persistent instant messaging -- Being mobile - the mobility advantage -- From Roundtable and Email to CRM -- Do more with real-time messaging.

The great advantage of the unified communications platform -- Developing your own UC add-ons -- Summary -- 5. Cost Optimization Approaches -- Need for an efficient communication solution -- Optimization opportunities with UC -- Reducing direct costs of communication services -- Reducing the costs/fees for Internet and data services -- Potential savings -- Reducing costs/fees for conference services -- Potential savings -- Reducing costs/charges for mobile and fixed line telephony -- Potential savings -- Optimizing communication and collaboration cost by using Federation -- Reducing costs/fees for equipment setting up -- Potential savings -- Optimizing travel expenses and business travel -- Potential savings -- Optimizing communication infrastructure and replacing legacy technology -- Potential savings -- Advantages of cloud services -- Optimization of existing infrastructure -- Potential savings -- Optimization of software licenses -- Potential savings -- Take advantage of knowledge and human capital -- Potential savings -- Business value assessment -- Summary -- 6. Unified Communications Projects in Practice -- Initial situation -- The role of a UC solution -- Evaluating UC solutions -- The Microsoft UC solution for Contoso -- Additional benefits of UC solution -- From decision, Proof of Concept, to rollout of UC -- The pilot phase -- Implementation of training -- The overall concept -- Concluding remarks -- Summary -- 7. Analyzing the Key Points of a Unified Communications Project -- Evaluation phase -- How can this be done easily? -- Selecting unified communications solution and solution provider -- Decision making and pilot phase -- Summary -- 8. Technology Inside the Microsoft UC Platform and a Look into the Future -- Microsoft Lync Server 2013 -- Lync topology planning -- Migrating from another Lync or OCS topology.

Creating a new Lync topology -- Server roles and editions -- Lync Standard Edition -- Lync Enterprise Edition -- Lync Server considerations, roles, and functionalities -- Front End Server -- Back End Server -- Edge Server -- Mediation Server -- Director Server -- Group Chat Server(s) -- Enterprise Voice with Lync 2013 Standard Edition -- Branch Site with Lync 2013 -- Operation system and virtualization -- Lync Server 2013 supports all Lync Server workloads in virtualization topologies -- Network performance for communication and collaboration -- Network port and security in Lync 2013 -- Ports and protocols for internal servers -- External A/V firewall and port requirements -- Administration of a Lync Server topology -- The Lync client -- Features available in the Lync 2013 client family -- Lync 2013 in contact center deployments -- Skype and Lync -- Future development -- Future vision -- Summary -- A. Appendix A. -- Index.