Office Communications Server Rebranded as ‘Lync’

The release candidate of the ‘wave 14’ communications products is now available. The Office Communication Server and Communicator have been rebranded as Microsoft Lync. Kirk Gregersen, Senior Director, writes in a TechNet blog post, “Lync – a combination of ‘link’ and ‘sync’ – is about connecting people in new ways, anytime, anywhere.”

More than 400 partners are involved in readiness activities to help customers plan, deploy, manage, and support Lync 2010 when it is generally available later in the fall.

ISVs

Independent software vendors provide traditional functions in unified communications, such as contact centers, call recording, and accounting, and an entirely new class of solutions that integrate communications deeply within business applications and processes. Some of our partners include - Blue Position; Clarity; Clearway NMS; Computer Talk; Convergent; Enabling Technologies; Evangelyze.net; FaceTime; Formicary; Geomant; ISI-Info; MetalForming; MindCTI; OSIsoft; Post CTI / Live-PA; PrairieFyre; ProtonMedia; Telerik; Telrex; Twisted Pair; UnifySquare; Wortell.

You can get release candidates for both Lync 2010 and Lync Server 2010 from Download Microsoft® Lync™ Server 2010 Release Candidate.

For More Information

• Home Page: Microsoft Lync Server – Unified Communications Platform
• Announcement: Introducing Microsoft Lync, the next OCS!
• Developer Center: Office Communications Developer Center
• More about Lync: View Tech Ed presentations online . Just search for “Communications Server.”

About Lync

Microsoft Lync is the fifth major release of our product that combines presence, instant messaging, conferencing, and voice in a single system . One system for customers to purchase, manage, and secure, instead of separate systems for presence, IM, conferencing, and voice/telephony. As a result, the investments of Microsoft and our customers in scalability, security, and high availability apply to all the ways people communicate, not just voice. Lync customers can take advantage of redundancy within a data center to survive server failures, failover scenarios across data centers to survive data center disasters, and appliances for branch offices that provide telephony and instant messaging in the case of WAN outages.

Bruce D. KyleISV Architect Evangelist | Microsoft Corporation