• Cutting costs by stealth
• Microsoft Office 365 user group  

Costs savings of up to 50% on a company's total telecommunications bill are the stuff of corporate dreams and should have senior managers shouting from the rooftops.

Remarkably, some companies are achieving these savings without the expensive roll-out required by most sophisticated new IT services: no fanfare, no training, no workshops and every feature enabled. This is many IT managers' idea of a nightmare.

Several large multinationals report this level of cost reduction following a stealthy release of Lync, accompanied by help and advice to users on request. Demand spreads virally between users and work groups, with staff introducing other employees to its features because they like Lync so much. People appreciate the integration of Lync with the rest of the Microsoft product set and, in particular, once they're used to having the presence feature they are most unhappy if it is removed.

Introduction by stealth and the extraordinary potential to cut telecoms costs were two of many points discussed at the last h2index unified communications forum hosted by Mars in Slough in January 2014.  

Ten companies attended, all large multinationals, representing a range of industries including chemicals, energy, pharmaceuticals, consumer goods and financial services.  

Whilst all the companies represented were committed to Lync for internal telephony, desktop sharing, instant messaging and presence, some use Lync across the board, whereas others mix Lync and their incumbent telecoms provider.

In addition to the stealthy approach, the group's discussions covered:

• how the cost savings were achieved
• difference in video use compared with expectations
• higher than anticipated telephony voice quality
• significant impact on the workplace

Cost savings

Cost savings were part of every business plan, but several participants have exploited the full capabilities of Lync at a large scale and they are achieving even higher cost savings than anyone expected at 40-50% of their total telecommunications cost.

This comes from the substantial reductions in conferencing and mobile roaming costs, as well as the removal of the capital and maintenance costs associated with traditional technologies. The large cost savings alone justify the investment; quantifying the intangible benefits is not necessary. Nevertheless, the full capabilities group report big improvements in mobility, efficiency and working environment.

Video use

Everyone in the user group had been concerned that their networks might not cope with the bandwidth required by video. This turned out to be the dog that didn't bark: the full capabilities group reported relatively low video use, typically one concurrent session in an office of 1,000 people. In the initial stages, users experiment with video and use it heavily, but the volume of calls tends to die down.

Over the longer term, the use of video may well evolve considerably and is already having an impact upon meeting etiquette. Changing behaviour patterns discussed included using video:

• for one-to-one meetings because it makes them shorter
• to show others the physical details, for example showing a manufacturing machine failure by simply pointing the iPad's camera at the machine
• for conference calls because everyone has to pay attention rather than checking their emails, which makes the calls quicker and more efficient.

Voice quality

Voice quality has proved to be very high; Lync is as good as or better than traditional telephony. Although not as stable, there was an expectation that reliability would improve and no longer be an issue.

Initially people thought that Lync would be unsuitable for certain areas such as trading floors and call centres, which have high levels of background noise, conference rooms, and dangerous environments like oil rigs. But participants report Lync pilots in several of these areas.

Workplace

Lync is enabling dramatic changes in the way people work; however, companies have to find the right balance between individuals being in the office and working remotely. If employees rarely meet, the social and cultural fabric starts to fray making it particularly hard for new staff to settle and for the company to maintain its culture. Companies' responses vary from encouraging people to meet face to face, creating hubs to help people to work together, and reconfiguring workspace to create huddle rooms for informal meetings. They realise the need for coffee machine conversations. To routinise and normalise the use of Lync as the means of collaboration and communication, companies put Lync connections into every meeting room.

This is a snapshot of the discussions, the unified communications forum meets twice a year and the next meeting will be in September 2014. We work hard to ensure that the organizations in any one forum are of similar scale, face similar issues and involve senior representatives directly responsible for the specific topic.

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