Skype for Business Server (formerly Microsoft Office Communications Server and Microsoft Lync Server) is real-time communications server software that provides the infrastructure for enterprise

instant messaging Instant messaging (IM) technology is a type of online chat allowing real-time text transmission over the Internet or another computer network. Messages are typically transmitted between two or more parties, when each user inputs text and trigge ...

, presence,

VoIP Voice over Internet Protocol (VoIP), also called IP telephony, is a method and group of technologies for the delivery of voice communications and multimedia sessions over Internet Protocol (IP) networks, such as the Internet. The terms Internet t ...

, ad hoc and structured conferences ( audio,

video Video is an electronic medium for the recording, copying, playback, broadcasting, and display of moving visual media. Video was first developed for mechanical television systems, which were quickly replaced by cathode-ray tube (CRT) syst ...

and

web conferencing Web conferencing is used as an umbrella term for various types of online conferencing and collaborative services including webinars (web seminars), webcasts, and web meetings. Sometimes it may be used also in the more narrow sense of the peer-l ...

) and

PSTN The public switched telephone network (PSTN) provides infrastructure and services for public telecommunication. The PSTN is the aggregate of the world's circuit-switched telephone networks that are operated by national, regional, or local teleph ...

connectivity through a third-party gateway or SIP trunk. These features are available within an organization, between organizations and with external users on the public internet or standard phones (on the PSTN as well as SIP trunking).

Features

One basic use of Skype for Business Server is

(IM) and presence within a single organization. This includes support for rich presence information,

file transfer File transfer is the transmission of a computer file through a communication channel from one computer system to another. Typically, file transfer is mediated by a communications protocol. In the history of computing, numerous file transfer protocol ...

and voice and video communication. Skype for Business Server uses Interactive Connectivity Establishment for NAT traversal and TLS

encryption In cryptography, encryption is the process of encoding information. This process converts the original representation of the information, known as plaintext, into an alternative form known as ciphertext. Ideally, only authorized parties can de ...

to enable secure voice and video both inside and outside the corporate network. Skype for Business Server also supports remote users, both corporate users on the Internet (e.g. mobile or home workers) as well as users in partner companies. Skype for Business supports identity federation, enabling interoperability with other corporate IM networks. Federation can be configured either manually (where each partner manually configures the relevant edge servers in the other organization) or automatically (using the appropriate SRV records in the DNS). Microsoft Skype for Business Server uses Session Initiation Protocol (SIP) for signaling along with the

SIMPLE Simple or SIMPLE may refer to: *Simplicity, the state or quality of being simple Arts and entertainment * ''Simple'' (album), by Andy Yorke, 2008, and its title track * "Simple" (Florida Georgia Line song), 2018 * "Simple", a song by Johnn ...

extensions to SIP for IM and presence. Media is transferred using RTP and SRTP. The live meeting

client Client(s) or The Client may refer to: * Client (business) * Client (computing), hardware or software that accesses a remote service on another computer * Customer or client, a recipient of goods or services in return for monetary or other valuabl ...

uses Persistent Shared Object Model (PSOM) to download meeting content. The communicator client also uses

HTTPS Hypertext Transfer Protocol Secure (HTTPS) is an extension of the Hypertext Transfer Protocol (HTTP). It is used for secure communication over a computer network, and is widely used on the Internet. In HTTPS, the communication protocol is enc ...

to connect with the web components server to download address books and expand distribution lists. By default, supported combinations include encrypted communications using SIP over TLS and SRTP as well as unencrypted SIP over TCP and RTP. Microsoft has published details of supported configuration for qualified vendors through Unified Communications Open Interoperability Program (UCOIP). IM is only one portion of the Skype for Business suite. The other major components are

telephony and

video conferencing Videotelephony, also known as videoconferencing and video teleconferencing, is the two-way or multipoint reception and transmission of audio signal, audio and video signals by people in different locations for Real-time, real time communication. ...

through the desktop communicator client. Remote access is possible using the desktop, mobile and web clients. Several third parties have incorporated Skype for Business functionality on existing platforms. HP has implemented it on its Halo video conferencing platform.

History

When Microsoft Office Live Communications Server was originally launched on 29 December 2003, it replaced the

Exchange Exchange may refer to: Physics *Gas exchange is the movement of oxygen and carbon dioxide molecules from a region of higher concentration to a region of lower concentration. Places United States * Exchange, Indiana, an unincorporated community * ...

Instant Messenger Service that had been included in Exchange 2000, but which was removed from the Exchange 2003 feature set. Holders of Exchange 2000 licenses which included

Software Assurance Software assurance (SwA) is defined as "the level of confidence that software is free from vulnerabilities, either intentionally designed into the software or accidentally inserted at any time during its lifecycle, and that the software functions ...

were entitled to receive Live Communications Server as an upgrade, along with Exchange 2003; however, Live Communications Server

Client Access License A client access license (CAL) is a commercial software license that allows client computers to use server software services. Most commercial desktop apps are licensed so that payment is required for each installation, but some server products can ...

s were purchased as normal for new users. OCS R2 was announced at VoiceCon in Amsterdam in October 2008, a year after releasing Office Communications Server 2007. Microsoft released Microsoft Office Communications Server 2007 R2 in February 2009. The R2 release added the following features: * Dial-in audioconferencing * Desktop sharing * Persistent Group Chat (only available on Windows OS clients) * Attendant console and delegation * Session Initiation Protocol trunking * Mobility and single-number reach Microsoft Lync Server 2010 reached

general availability A software release life cycle is the sum of the stages of development and maturity for a piece of computer software ranging from its initial development to its eventual release, and including updated versions of the released version to help impro ...

in November 2010. Microsoft Lync 2013 was released to manufacturing in October 2012 with SP1 being released in March 2014. In 2015, the new version of Lync became Skype for Business with a new client experience, new server release and updates to the service in

Office 365 Microsoft 365 is a product family of productivity software, collaboration and cloud-based services owned by Microsoft. It encompasses online services such as Outlook.com, OneDrive, Microsoft Teams, programs formerly marketed under the name ...

. Microsoft has stated that general availability for Skype for Business Server 2019 is targeted for the end of 2018.

Versions

* 2018 - Skype for Business Server 2019 (due end of 2018) * 2015 - Skype for Business Server 2015 * 2012 - Lync Server 2013 (RTM 11 October 2012) * 2010 - Lync Server 2010 * 2009 - Office Communications Server 2007 R2 * 2007 - Office Communications Server 2007 * 2006 - Live Communications Server 2005 with SP1 * 2005 - Live Communications Server 2005, codenamed Vienna * 2003 - Live Communications Server 2003

Client software and devices

Microsoft Lync is the primary client application released with Lync Server. This client is used for IM, presence, voice and video calls, desktop sharing, file transfer and ad hoc conferences. With Lync 2013 there will be a release of Lync Light Client with fewer features. Microsoft also ships the Microsoft Attendant Console. This is a version of the Lync more oriented towards receptionists or delegates / secretaries or others who get a large volume of inbound calls. Persistent Group Chat functionality (introduced with Lync Server 2010) is only supported on the Windows OS client at this time. This requires an additional server or multiple servers for processing group chat transactions. Other client software and devices include: * Lync Mobile is a mobile edition of the Lync Server 2010 client that offers similar functionality, including voice calls via the GSM network, instant messaging, presence and single number reachability. Clients for Lync Mobile includes the IPhone, IPad, Android, Windows Phone 7 and 8. New releases of Lync Mobile 2013 (Wave 2) are anticipated, bringing features such as collaboration and voice and video over IP. * Microsoft RoundTable is an audio and video conferencing device that provides a 360-degree view of the conference room and tracks the various speakers. This device is now produced and sold via Polycom under the product name CX5000. * The

Skype for Business Skype for Business (formerly Microsoft Lync and Office Communicator) is an enterprise software application for instant messaging and videotelephony developed by Microsoft as part of the Microsoft Office suite. It is designed for use with the on- ...

client is supported by Lync Server 2013, as well as Skype for Business Server. The documentation of Lync 2013 contains references to Lync Room Edition Devices - these are anticipated to provide close to immersive experience. * LG-Nortel and Polycom also make IP phones in a traditional phone form factor that operate an embedded edition of Office Communicator 2007. The physical plastic phones as referred by Microsoft are also named Tanjay Phones. * IP Desk Phones 'Optimized for Lync': Powered by Lync Phone Edition these phones have full support to PBX functionalities, access to calendar and contacts, rich conferencing, extended functionalities when connected to the PC, and integrated security and manageability. Built from the ground up for Lync, these phones come in different models designed to meet specific business needs, including a rich information worker experience, a basic desk phone, common area phone, or conference room phone. Aastra and other vendors offer IP Desk Phones Optimized for Microsoft Lync. * Damaka has Lync clients for Android, iOS (iPhone/iPad), BlackBerry, Symbian, Windows 8, Mac OS X. It provides chat, voice, file transfer, video, and desktop sharing functions. * Fisil has Lync clients for Linux, Android, iPhone, iPad. Linux support: Fisil makes the only available supported Linux client for Lync. The unifiedme.co.uk reference lists a Pidgin-based workaround, but according to the information at CERN, it has important limitations. The Damaka reference leads to the Google+ main page and has no information on a Linux client that I could find. The Fisil reference goes to a project management company that can write custom software.

Compliance

Lync Server also has the capability to log and archive all instant message traffic passing through the server and to create Call Detail Records for conferences and voice. These features can help provide compliance with legal requirements for many organizations. The Archiving server is not an overall end-to-end compliance solution, as archiving requires you to install the Archiving Server and to configure front end servers accordingly.

Public IM connectivity (PIC)

Lync Server also enables organizations to interoperate with four external IM services:

AOL Instant Messenger AIM (AOL Instant Messenger) was an instant messaging and presence computer program created by AOL, which used the proprietary OSCAR instant messaging protocol and the TOC protocol to allow registered users to communicate in real time. AIM w ...

Microsoft Messenger service Messenger (formerly MSN Messenger Service, .NET Messenger Service and Windows Live Messenger Service) was an instant messaging and presence system developed by Microsoft in 1999 for use with its MSN Messenger software. It was used by instant me ...

Yahoo! Messenger Yahoo! Messenger (sometimes abbreviated Y!M) was an advertisement-supported instant messaging client (computing), client and associated protocol provided by Yahoo!. Yahoo! Messenger was provided free of charge and could be downloaded and used wit ...

, and Google Talk. PIC was first introduced with Service Pack 1 for Live Communications Server 2005, PIC is licensed separately for Yahoo, but is free for AOL and Messenger service for customers with Software Assurance. Microsoft announced that effective 30 June 2014, they will no longer support PIC connectivity to AOL/AIM"Microsoft Support for Public Instant Messaging Connectivity"
Microsoft TechNet Video. Retrieved 25 January 2014.

Third-party software support

SIPE plugin

, the third-party SIPE plugin enables third-party clients such as Pidgin,

Adium Adium is a free and open source instant messaging client for macOS that supports multiple IM networks, including Google Talk and XMPP. In the past, it has also supported AIM, ICQ, Windows Live Messenger and Yahoo! Messenger. Adium is written usi ...

and Miranda NG as well as clients using the Telepathy framework to support MS Lync Servers with some limitation (Audio but no SRTP, No Video) via the extended version of SIP/

XMPP

Lync Server has an

XMPP Extensible Messaging and Presence Protocol (XMPP, originally named Jabber) is an open communication protocol designed for instant messaging (IM), presence information, and contact list maintenance. Based on XML (Extensible Markup Language), i ...

gateway server to federate with external XMPP servers. With Lync Server 2013, XMPP is natively part of the product. The

ejabberd ejabberd is an Extensible Messaging and Presence Protocol (XMPP) application server and an MQ Telemetry Transport (MQTT) broker, written mainly in the Erlang programming language. It can run under several Unix-like operating systems such as ma ...

server has a bridge that enables federation with OCS servers, without gateways (transports).

Competition

Competitors to Lync Server include: * Alcatel-Lucent Enterprisebr>OpenTouch Conversation
Platform * 3CX Phone System; 3CX Phone System for Windows is a software-based IP PBX * Alceo's BCS Communicator *

Asterisk (PBX) Asterisk is a software implementation of a private branch exchange (PBX). In conjunction with suitable telephony hardware interfaces and network applications, Asterisk is used to establish and control telephone calls between telecommunication e ...

Platform - SIP,

ISDN Integrated Services Digital Network (ISDN) is a set of communication standards for simultaneous digital transmission of voice, video, data, and other network services over the digitalised circuits of the public switched telephone network. Work ...

IAX Inter-Asterisk eXchange (IAX) is a communications protocol native to the Asterisk private branch exchange (PBX) software, and is supported by a few other softswitches, PBX systems, and softphones. It is used for transporting VoIP telephony session ...

, SMS, open source telephone system *

AT&T AT&T Inc. is an American multinational telecommunications holding company headquartered at Whitacre Tower in Downtown Dallas, Texas. It is the world's largest telecommunications company by revenue and the third largest provider of mobile te ...

UC and SIP Services *

Avaya Aura Avaya Holdings Corp., often shortened to Avaya (), is an American multinational corporation, multinational technology company headquartered in Durham, North Carolina, Durham, North Carolina, that provides cloud communications and workstream col ...

(tm) Presence Services (with Messaging) and one-X software * Bopup Communication Server; Based on private and secure IM protocol *

Cisco Cisco Systems, Inc., commonly known as Cisco, is an American-based multinational digital communications technology conglomerate corporation headquartered in San Jose, California. Cisco develops, manufactures, and sells networking hardware, ...

's Unified Communications Manager IM & Presence (on-Prem) or WebEx Connect Jabber Service (Cisco cloud) *

* Elastix; Elastix PBX, VoIP email, IM, faxing and collaboration functionality * openUC Enterprise * IBM's

Lotus Sametime HCL Sametime Premium (formerly IBM Sametime and IBM Lotus Sametime) is a client–server application and middleware platform that provides real-time, unified communications and collaboration for enterprises. Those capabilities include presence i ...

* iChat Server (see

Mac OS X Server macOS Server, formerly Mac OS X Server and OS X Server, is a discontinued series of Unix-like server operating systems developed by Apple Inc., based on macOS and later add-on software packages for the latter. macOS Server added serve ...

) *

Jabber XCP Jabber may refer to: * The original name of the Extensible Messaging and Presence Protocol (XMPP), the open technology for instant messaging and presence. * Jabber.org, the public, free instant messaging and presence service based on XMPP. * Jabber ...

(from Jabber, Inc., not to be confused with the

IETF The Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF) is a standards organization for the Internet and is responsible for the technical standards that make up the Internet protocol suite (TCP/IP). It has no formal membership roster or requirements and a ...

open standard

) * NEC's UCB and UCE * Mitel Micollab *

Openfire Openfire (previously known as Wildfire, and Jive Messenger) is an instant messaging (IM) and groupchat server for the Extensible Messaging and Presence Protocol (XMPP). It is written in Java and licensed under the Apache License 2.0. History The ...

* Prosody * ShoreTel * Siemens' OpenScape *

sipX sipXecs is a free software enterprise communications system. It was initially developed by Pingtel Corporation in 2003 as a voice over IP telephony server located in Boston, MA. The server was later extended with additional collaboration capab ...

ecs * Sun Java System Instant Messaging (see

Sun Java System Communications Suite Sun Java System Communications Suite is a collection of "Industrial-Strength" software services from Sun Microsystems. The supported platforms are: Red Hat Enterprise Linux, Solaris and Windows Server. Since Oracle acquired Sun in 2010, collect ...

)
Swyx
*

Tigase Tigase is an open source (GNU Affero General Public License, GNU AGPL-3.0-only) project started by Artur Hefczyc in October 2004 to develop an Extensible Messaging and Presence Protocol, XMPP server implementation in Java (programming language) ...

* TrueConf * Vertical Communications
Algoria
TWS In

, the free public instant messaging networks (Google, Live Messenger, Yahoo and AOL) are widely used and represent a degree of competition. There have been attempts by other vendors at providing solutions such as

Yahoo! Yahoo! (, styled yahoo''!'' in its logo) is an American web services provider. It is headquartered in Sunnyvale, California and operated by the namesake company Yahoo Inc., which is 90% owned by investment funds managed by Apollo Global Manage ...

's Enterprise Instant Messenger; however these attempts have been largely unsuccessful. An ICQ corporate client and server option once existed, but it is no longer supported or developed. Products such as Cisco Unified Presence Server (Version 6.0.2+) support federation with Microsoft Office Communication Server 2007 to provide presence of Cisco IP phones and remote call control of the IP phone from the Microsoft Office Communicator client. The Siemens OpenScape solution offers a federation with the Office communicator, and also an integration into the office communicator, allowing to use the standard functionalities of the office communication suite together with the SIP based voice functionalities of the Siemens platform. The Asterisk telephone platform supports SIP, IAX, and ISDN connections. Most telephones that support these protocols may be used with Asterisk, including software phone clients.

References

External links

*
Lync Dev Center
{{Microsoft Office Microsoft Office servers Microsoft server software Microsoft server technology Instant messaging server software Innovative Communications Alliance products