ITPRO NERDERY

Lync On-Premises vs Lync Online

A common question about Lync Online (and the other Office 365 products too, but this post is Lync-centric) is “how is this different from the on-premises solution?” And there is a comprehensive feature comparison available at the Office 365 Community site, but usually the next question I get is “yeah yeah, but what does that really mean for me?”

So here’s a shortlist of the more pertinant features that you don’t get with Lync Online.

• PSTN calling (incoming or outgoing)
• PBX integration
• Advanced call handling (hold, redirection, park)
• IP Phone support (USB only)
• Analog line support (eg. fax)
• Response groups (ie. Direct inbound call to a recipient group)
• Persistent group chat
• Skill search from SharePoint (either on-premise or online)
• Client-side recording
• Dial-in conferencing
• Interop with on-premise video conferencing systems (eg. Polycom suites)
• QoS
• Quality of Experience Reporting

This usually leads to a question like, “ok, so what do they have in common then?”

So for completeness, here’s some of the more popular things you can do with both versions of the product.

• PC-to-PC audio/video
• Address book search
• IMPresence
• Office application integration (click-to-chat)
• Federation with Lync Online, Lync On-Premise, and OCS On-Premise
• Application/Desktop/Whiteboard/Presentation sharing
• Online Meetings
• Guest attendees (via rich client and web client)
• Roundtable support
• Meeting lobby

Hope that’s helpful.  Might add SharePoint Online and Exchange Online comparisons too.