Skype for Business Server

Skype For Business Server is an enterprise-ready unified communications platform.Skype For Business Server connects people everywhere, on Windows 8 and other operating systems including mobile devices, as part of their everyday productivity experience.Skype For Business Server provides a consistent, single client experience for presence, instant messaging, voice, video and a great meeting experience.Skype For Business Server users can connect to anyone on Skype, enabling rich communication with hundreds of millions of people around the world.

Key Features:

• Lync Unified Client: Skype For Business Server 2013 provides a single, unified client for real-time communications, including voice and video calls, Lync Meetings, presence, instant messaging, and persistent chat.
• Lync Windows 8 App: Lync is optimised for touch on Windows 8 (both x86-based Windows8 and Windows RT) and takes advantage of Windows 8 "touch first" capabilities to provide fast, natural, hands-on control of communications across a variety of devices and architectures.
• Lync Web App: The Lync Web App allows PC and Mac users to join a Lync Meeting from within an HTML5-based browser, and delivers a full Lync meeting experience, including multiparty HD video, voice over IP, instant messaging, desktop, application, and PowerPoint sharing.
• Lync Mobile Clients: Lync Mobile Clients are available for Windows Phone, iPhone, iPad, and Android.
• Single Click Conference Join: Joining a Lync Meeting requires only a single click or touch, whether from an Outlook meeting reminder on a Windows PC or from the calendar or meeting pane on Windows Phone, iOS, and Android devices.
• Presence: See the availability status of a contact with visual presence indicators.
• Contact Card: A dynamic card that displays a contacts high resolution photo, their presence, status note, location and organisational details and is consistent across Microsoft Office applications.
• Lync Meeting: Previously known as "online meeting", Lync Meetings provide capabilities to interact with people through multiparty HD video, audio, instant messaging, and content sharing.
• Meeting View: Meeting View options are designed to bring content and people together while optimising the Lync Meeting experience for every individual participants needs.
• Multiparty HD Video Gallery: Continuous view of multiple HD video streams or contact card photos in conference displayed in a gallery format. Photos replace active speaker video when video is unavailable. Gallery controls enable participants to select video stream of interest, see participant name and identify active speakers.
• Persistent Chat: Organise or participate in topic based virtual rooms where workgroups or designated colleagues meet and collaborate in real-time. Discussions are searchable and persist over time enabling efficient information sharing.
  
• OneNote Share: Allows users to create and share OneNote digital meeting notes within a Lync Meeting, reducing possible errors caused by later transcription and simplifying communication and follow-up.
• Exchange Archiving: Using the Exchange Online archiving, you can store all you emails, instant messages and Lync Online meeting contents, then easily search them using Exchange e-Discovery compliance.
• Lync Federation: Extends unified communications securely over the Internet to customers, suppliers, and partners using Lync.
• Skype Connectivity: Enables presence sharing, instant messaging (IM), and voice calling with the hundreds of millions of people around the world who use Skype.
  
• Server Role Consolidation: Lync can reduce the number of server roles by co-locating roles which were previously deployed or managed separately, allowing for simplified deployment and management.
• Scale and High Availability Improvements: Lync Server front-end architecture has been redesigned allowing a larger number of active users in one pool while improving high availability capabilities that can help lower total cost of ownership.
• Active Monitoring: Gives Lync administrators the ability to monitor pools, servers, networks across different datacenters through the public internet.

Skype for Business Server - Features

Features include:

• Instant Messaging and Presence: Instant messaging (IM) and presence help users to find and communicate with one another efficiently and effectively. IM provides a secure instant messaging platform with conversation history and support for public connectivity with users of public IM networks such as MSN, Windows Live, Yahoo! and AOL. Presence establishes and displays user availability and willingness to communicate using common states such as Available or Busy
• Conferencing: support for IM conferencing, audio conferencing, web conferencing, video conferencing and application sharing for scheduled and impromptu meetings. All meeting types are supported via a single client. Support is provided for dial-in conferencing enabling users of public switched telephone network (PSTN) telephones to participate in the audio portion of conferences. Conferences can change in real time: for example, a single conference can start as instant messages between a few users and escalate to an audio conference with desktop sharing and a larger audience without interrupting the flow of conversation
• Enterprise Voice: the Voice over Internet Protocol (VoIP) in Lync Server 2010 providing a voice option to enhance or replace traditional private branch exchange (PBX) systems including presence, IM, collaboration and meetings. Features include direct support for call answer, hold, resume, transfer, forward and divert. Personalised speed dialing keys are replaced by Contacts lists and automatic intercom is replaced with IM. Enterprise Voice supports high availability through call admission control (CAC), branch office survivability and extended options for data resiliency
• Support for Remote Users: provide full Lync Server functionality for users who are currently outside an organisation firewall by deploying Edge Servers to provide a secure, authorised link for remote users to connect to conferences by using a personal computer with Lync 2010 installed, the telephone or a web interface. Deploying Edge Servers enables federatation with partner or vendor organisations. A federated relationship enables users to place federated users on Contacts lists, exchange presence information and instant messages and issue invitations to audio, video and web conferences
• Product Integration: meeting tools are integrated into Outlook 2010 to enable organisers to schedule a meeting or start an impromptu conference. Presence information is integrated into Outlook 2010 and SharePoint 2010. Exchange Unified Messaging (UM) provides several integration features: users can see new voice mail within Lync 2010, click a play button in the Outlook message to hear the audio voice mail or view a transcription of the voice mail in the notification message
• Deployment: plan and deploy servers and clients using the Microsoft Lync Server 2010 Planning Tool and the Topology Builder. The Planning Tool is a wizard that poses a series of concerning the Lync Server features to be enabled and capacity planning. It then creates a recommended deployment topology and produces several forms of output to aid planning and installation. Topology Builder is an installation component of Lync Server 2010 for creating, adjusting and publishing a planned topology that validates the topology before server installations. When Lync Server is deployed on individual servers, the installation program deploys the server as directed in the topology. The Planning Tool is a pre-release version: final release is scheduled for the first quarter of 2011. The capacity planning numbers in the Planning Tool are preliminary and are not supported for the final release
• Management Tools:
• Active Directory: user information eliminates the need for separate user and policy databases
• Microsoft Lync Server 2010 Control Panel: a web-based graphical user interface enabling administrators to manage systems from anywhere on the corporate network without installing specialised management software
• ,em>Lync Server Management Shell: command-line management tool based on the Windows PowerShell command-line interface that provides a command set for administration of all aspects of the product and enables Lync Server administrators to automate repetitive tasks. The IM and presence features are installed automatically in every Lync Server deployment. Options rea provided to deploy conferencing, Enterprise Voice and remote user access
• User Interfaces:
• Microsoft Lync 2010: communication options including instant messaging (IM), telephony and video
• Microsoft Lync 2010 Mobile: use and manage Microsoft Lync 2010 enterprise messaging from mobile devices
• Microsoft Lync 2010 Attendant: help administrative assistants, receptionists and front-line business professionals
• Simultaneous Ringing: enable incoming calls to ring automatically on a mobile, home or other telephone number in addition to the desktop client
• Pair Group Chat: set Lync 2010 as the primary communications client and to start an IM conversation, a Lync call or a video call or to send an e-mail with anyone in the participant list
• Monitoring Capabilities: includes SCOM (System Center Operations Manager) compatibility to meet compliance and regulatory requirements
• Client Platform Features: embed Communicator in an application using the Microsoft Lync Server 2010 SDK. It includes Visual Studio controls in .NET Windows Presentation Foundation (WPF) and Silverlight reducing the need for coding when embedding Lync user interface elements into an applications. Extend Lync conversations using the Lync Conversation Extension Window to display information about a conversation, add call control tools or add functionality such as translation services. Enhanced contextual collaboration is provided with Launch Links for launching applications directly from Communicator and enabling participants to establish call context. Build client experiences in .NET using the Lync 2010 Managed AP and build a customised user experience to meet industry or organisation-specific needs
• Server Platform Features: platform support for contact centre or help desk scenarios such as IVR, ACD, call recording and web chat, query response bots and conferencing and application sharing via the Microsoft Unified Communications Managed API 3.0 (UCMA 3.0). Access all UC-Enabled Services from any telephone with a single login to enable scenarios such as connecting to an online meeting using a spoken command, checking for new SharePoint tasks or hearing an Exchange e-mail. Use single-point application provisioning, software-based load balancing, automatic fail-over and draining. Speech technology is provided in twenty six languages via the Microsoft Speech Platform, an enterprise-grade server-based speech platform that ships with UCMA 3.0 and that adds VoiceXML 2.1 to UCMA. Developers can use tools such as Visual Studio and Microsoft .NET Framework and Web Service programming paradigms to build communications solutions.

Skype for Business Server - System Requirements

• Microsoft Windows 7, Vista or XP.

Microsoft Word 2007, 2010, 2000, 2002 or 2003
• Microsoft Office Compatibility Pack for Word, Excel and PowerPoint 2007.

• Microsoft Word Viewer.