Lync 2013 is really hard to describe in a few words. We are talking about a product that enables users to perform instant messaging, audio conferencing, and video conferencing. This product features Enterprise Voice that includes the capability to integrate itself with legacy PSTN and PBX through a gateway. We are able to grant access to external users via the Internet in a secure manner, and they will have a Lync experience not different from the one users have in an internal network. Such richness with regard to features and such flexibility makes Lync 2013 a game changer in the world of unified communication (UC). If we are going to deploy a new office in a "green field" situation, if we need to replace an old telephony infrastructure, if we want to enable our users to "anywhere" access for audio and video conferencing, or if we are evaluating a cloud solution for a part of our company or branch offices, the answer to all these different situations may always be Lync.
The strong integration with existing Active Directory, Exchange, and SharePoint deployments implies that a lot of IT professionals who were not interested in the UC world before, are now involved in the deployment, design, and management of Lync. Also, people who already have a good experience with other solutions, will be increasingly interested in Lync as a potential solution to add to their toolbox. And that is why this book exists. If you need to get started with Lync 2013, or there are some features that you would like to know better, I hope that you find your answer here.
Chapter 1, Installing a Lync 2013 Enterprise Pool, introduces the basic concepts of Lync 2013, and explains in a step-by-step manner the deployment of an Enterprise pool of Lync.
Chapter 2, Understanding Front End Pool Pairing, explores Front End pairing, which is a new feature of Lync 2013, that enables a high level of resiliency using different servers that may have been deployed (also) on different sites. In this chapter, we will see what pool pairing is and how to configure it.
Chapter 3, Deploying Lync Mobility, demonstrates mobility as one of the most requested and interesting features of Lync 2013. This chapter explains how to enable external users on Lync, and how to support mobile devices.
Chapter 4, Integrating Lync Mediation Server, explains why whenever we are going to deploy Enterprise Voice, the first Lync role we need is the Mediation Server. This is a function that has an enormous impact on our design and implementation, and we will try to deeply dive into it during the chapter.
Chapter 5, Getting Started with Lync Enterprise Voice, introduces all the basic concepts and tasks required to deploy a VoIP solution with Lync 2013 inside our company. Although the topic is really massive, the ideas presented here will give the base to start working with Enterprise Voice.
Chapter 6, Deploying Persistent Chat Server, introduces Persistent Chat, which is a new feature of Lync 2013, that enables the creation of a knowledge base for your users and the construction of "private" spaces, where a selected groups of our users are able to communicate. Here we will see how it works and how it is implemented.
Chapter 7, Choosing Lync 2013 Clients, focusses on knowing all the existing clients, their characteristics, and limits as a fundamental step to design the right solution and to achieve the best result for you users with the least effort. Here we will explore the different available solutions.
To deploy Lync 2013 in our internal network, we will need Windows 2008 R2 or Windows 2012, the Lync 2013 installation media, and the Office Web Apps setup. An Active Directory infrastructure is mandatory to install Lync, and it is useful to have an internal certification authority available. If we want to grant access to the external users, a reverse proxy solution (IIS, Apache, or any hardware or software enabled for publishing) is required, along with an additional Lync server dedicated to the Edge role. Also, in the aforementioned scenario, we will usually prefer to have an SSL certificate from a third-party authority.
This book is for IT professionals who are involved in the design, maintenance, or deployment of a Lync 2013 environment, for unified communication professionals coming with an experience in solutions from different vendors, and for decision-makers and project managers who want to have an idea of the capabilities and technical requirements (and impact) of Lync.
In this book, you will find a number of styles of text that distinguish between different kinds of information. Here are some examples of these styles, and an explanation of their meaning.
Code words in text are shown as follows: "Once up and running, the server generates three subfolders: 1-ApplicationServer-1, 1-CentralMgmt-1, and 1-Webservices-1."
Any command-line input or output is written as follows:
Export-CsConfiguration –File C:\temp\export.zip
New terms and important words are shown in bold. Words that you see on the screen, in menus or dialog boxes for example, appear in the text like this: "We will select the Import from a file option."
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