The 2011 Microsoft Worldwide Partner Conference in Los Angeles came to a close on the 14th of July, and the software giant continued to impress with its advancements in cloud computing. One of the key components discussed during the conference was the emergence of Microsoft Lync. Microsoft’s channel chief, Jon Roskill, said that unified communications, Lync, represents the software giant’s next billion-dollar business opportunity. Coincidentally, we’ve done an initial integration of Telax Hosted Call Center with Lync and are currently working on some more sophisticated functionality. The future of contact center software is UC! Stay tuned.
Consider this, in 2009 Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer asked partners of Microsoft to get certified on SharePoint, a web application platform. This year, the president of Microsoft’s Office business division, Kurt Delbeen, said, “(Lync) takes what SharePoint did for collaboration and does it for unified communications.” SharePoint went from $0 to $1 billion dollars in revenue quicker than any other Microsoft product, yes quicker than Office and Windows itself, and Lync could very well exceed that.
Another important development surrounding Lync is Microsoft’s announcement that Communications will be added as a competency certification for Microsoft partners. This certification will likely have a large focus on Lync, and the reason given by Roskill for the addition was customer demand. “You asked for it, we delivered it, go get it!”
Tags: business, business community, call center software, Lync, Microsoft, unified communications, WPC11