Without even considering scalability and amazing performance improvements the numbers speak for themselves.
#SETUP MICROSOFT LYNC UPGRADE#
Again this is not even factoring in the additional costs to support, maintain and upgrade the server. The annual costs of this are only $2,760 per year – so the on-premise installation costs the same as eight years on Lync Online. Connect from PC/Mac, landline, or mobile deviceand invite up to. It’s part of most Microsoft 365 Apps for business plans. In your first year the cost of running Lync Online would be $3,155 (monthly costs + setup). It has all the features of Lync plus powerful capabilities that make it easier to connect, share, and collaborate across devices and locations. Let’s throw in another $400 in IT services to pay to set up Lync Online. So let’s compare the above to using Lync Online from Office 365. Needless to say, sufficient bandwidth must be provided with a high-quality connection – which on its own can be several hundred dollars per month. Also not included is internet bandwidth required to support connections for remote users or conference attendees. I haven’t begun to factor in hardware to host this virtualised Lync Server environment backups, monitoring, management, support, additional feature add-ons, or patching and updates.
#SETUP MICROSOFT LYNC SOFTWARE#
To download Lync, sign in to Microsoft 365, then at the top of the page, click Settings > Office 365 settings > Software > Lync. Let’s use an example of a business with 50 staff that already have a phone system. Microsoft 365 includes Lync, which lets you have instant messaging (IM), audio and video conversations, and Lync Meetings. Quite often confused because it is cheap and relatively simple to use, if you were to purchase the on-premise equivalent ( Lync Server) it would require many thousands of dollars and a considerable amount of infrastructure and consultancy.
I have chosen Lync Online as the first of my series of cloud versus on-premise cost comparisons. And that is where the comparison is completely wrong. A suitable comparison would be purchasing a car outright versus leasing a vehicle with included servicing and fuel. The problem is that they are comparing the cost of the individual products against the cost of purchasing their on-premise equivalent. They then ask why should they pay a higher licence fee for Office 365 on a monthly basis? When businesses compare the cost of Office 365 to buying a server they frequently only count the licence costs.