Lowering the Cost of Communications, and Six More Real Benefits of Lync Enterprise Voice

by Zeus Kerravala

June 2013

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Lync Enterprise Voice and Lync video can improve worker productivity and streamline business processes, while lowering the overall total cost of communications. Lync Enterprise Voice and video enables the following benefits:

• Lowers the total cost of communications. The cost savings from Lynccomes from multiple factors. Exhibit 1 shows the main areas of costs savingsand how they are derived. The relative percentage of each category will varyby organization, but in general, the bulk of savings will come from long-distance charges, conversion to SIP and lower day-to-day maintenance costs.

Exhibit 1: Cost Savings from Lync Comes from Multiple Sources

Long distance charges Low cost or free on-net calls, least cost routing

Trunking charges Consolidation of trunks, conversion to SIP

System maintenance Reduction in spares, faster upgrades, lower-cost hardware

IT personnel Reassignment of IT staff, more tasks done with front line support

Moves, adds and changes (MAC)

MACs evolve to a self-service model driving the cost of a MAC from an average of $300 to zero

Mobility Wi-Fi calling, unified messaging, mobile UC

Source: ZK Research, 2013

• Improvement in worker productivity. Employee productivity gains can berealized from integrating voice and video functions into business applications.A software-based UC solution, such as Lync, can be used as a developmentplatform where developers can build click-to-chat, click-to-call or click-to-videobased applications.

• Better bang for the UC buck with existing UC solutions. The featuresenabled with Lync Enterprise Voice, combined with integration into businessapplications, will drive up usage of the UC tools and make workers muchmore efficient, providing rapid return on the UC investment. ZK Researchstudies estimate integrated voice features can save workers an average offour hours per week.

• Consolidation of infrastructure. Legacy communications systems oftenrequire system hardware to be resident in every location. Lync can change thearchitecture to reflect more modern applications. Lync servers can be centrallydeployed in a data center, and functionality can be distributed over the WAN,similar e-mail, CRM or other business applications.

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Lowering the Cost of Communications, and Five More Real Benefits of Lync Enterprise Voice 2

• Faster time-to-market. Historically it could take weeks or even months to deliver new communicationsfeatures to workers, as each system in each location had to be touched. A centrally deployedimplementation means the system can be updated in a single location (or twice for redundancy) and everyworker has the new features.

• Supports a strategic BYOD initiative. The mobile device of today has far more capabilities than a laptopdid just a few years ago. Mobile devices can be used for real-time video services and have high-qualityaudio capabilities, making them ideal for remote collaboration. A corporate BYOD implementation shouldinclude Microsoft Lync to maximize value.

• Lay the groundwork for video. Video is a powerful enterprise communications tool. Lync video simplifiesdeployment and, more importantly, creates an easy-to-use interface for workers. Even if it will not be utilizedimmediately, it’s important to have the infrastructure and solution partnerships in place to accommodatevideo when feasible for the organization to move forward.

Part 2 of 5 in the Beyond IM and Presence: Best Practices for Deploying Microsoft Lync Series

© 2013 ZK Research: A Division of Kerravala Consulting All rights reserved. Reproduction or redistribution in any form without the express prior permission of ZK Research is expressly prohibited.

For questions, comments or further information, email zeus@zkresearch.com.