Fabrizio Volpe is a Lync MVP and an experienced IT professional, with more than 15 years of experience working in the IT department of large-scale banking and financial companies. He has been working as a network and systems administrator in various firms of the Iccrea Banking Group (one of the top banking groups in Italy) since 2000. From 2011 to 2013, before moving his focus to Unified Communications, Fabrizio received the MVP award for Directory Services.

Over the past few years, Fabrizio has participated as a speaker at many events and conferences (both Italian and international). He creates IT-focused content on different platforms that have received good feedback. His works are available on YouTube (http://www.youtube.com/user/lync2013), on his personal blog (http://www.absoluteuc.org), and on SlideShare (http://www.slideshare.net/fabriziov).

Fabrizio has published three books with Packt Publishing: Getting Started with FortiGate, Getting Started with Microsoft Lync Server 2013, and Instant Microsoft Forefront UAG Mobile Configuration Starter. He has also authored a successful free e-book, Microsoft Lync Server 2013: Basic Administration, available in the TechNet Office gallery (http://bit.ly/1jbzpfo), which has been downloaded more than 25,000 times.

Alessio Giombini is a solutions architect, with a strong focus on Microsoft and Unified Communications area. He has over 15 years' worth of study and hands-on experience delivering small- to large-scale projects for major enterprise industries, mainly based on Microsoft and leading-edge technologies, systems applications, and operations running on top of them. He has a broad and mixed technical background in the IT infrastructure and communications field, systems integration, systems management, security, as well as an in-depth understanding of the business of computing and networking in enterprise organizations.

Alessio Giombini currently works for Intercall EMEA, based in the United Kingdom, as a solutions architect for Unified Communications platforms. He designs and deploys UC infrastructures based on Microsoft Lync and related technologies, including private and public cloud-based hosted solutions on multitenanted and dedicated Lync architectures. He also loves talking about Lync through presales, by delivering technical presentations and workshops, solution designs, writing HLD and LLD documents, delivering proof of concepts, and designing the solution through to implementation.

Lasse Nordvik Wedø has more than 14 years of experience working with large-scale IT infrastructure, specializing in planning, deploying, and supporting Unified Communications systems from both Microsoft and Cisco.

He previously specialized in planning, deploying, and supporting Windows Active Directory solutions, where security and messaging were his main areas of focus. He has recently been made a Microsoft P-TSP in Norway. In his spare time, he contributes to the Lync community through his own blog (http://tech.rundtomrundt.com), where he likes to share his thoughts and helpful scripts. He is also a contributor to a blog dedicated to helping admins organize their Enterprise Voice number plans (http://lyncnumbers.com). He was a speaker at Norwegian Lync day 2014 and TechEd Europe 2014.

António Vargas is a Microsoft Certified Solutions Master in Exchange 2013 with 15 years of experience as a Microsoft consultant, designing and deploying large-scale projects for customers across all industry sectors.

The main focus of his Microsoft projects is on the Unified Communications portfolio, more specifically on Microsoft Exchange, Microsoft Office 365, and Microsoft Lync.

Currently, Antonio works for Intercall EMEA, based in the United Kingdom, as a Microsoft Unified Communications architect, planning, designing, and delivering migrations and greenfield deployments of Microsoft Exchange and Microsoft Office 365 environments. Most of his work also includes configuring all levels of integration between Microsoft Lync and Microsoft Exchange, on premises or on Office 365.