The third of Microsoft's new Office servers available in public beta (Customer Preview) form is its next-generation unified-communications product, Lync Server 2013.
Microsoft officials have said little publicly so far about what users can expect with the next release of its Lync enterprise instant-messaging, VOIP and conferencing product. (Microsoft execs so far have been playing up the cloud and consumer-centric features across its Office 15 wave of products.)
I was wondering whether there would be much new in Lync 2013, as there were next-to-no leaks about the technical preview bits, something which wasn't true regarding the new SharePoint 2013 and Exchange 2013 products.
But there do seem to be a number of brand-new and tweaked features in the new version of Lync.
Here's Microsoft's TechNet post outlining many of the new features of Lync Server 2013. And here's a good blog post by Ken Lasko, a Lync Most Valuable Professional (MVP) and managing consultant with Buchanan Technologies (www.buchanan.com), a Dallas-based IT consulting company, outlining what he has found of interest in Lync 2013.
Among the new Lync 2013 features that Lasko and other Customer Preview testers have discovered:
Lasko also noted a new feature that may or may not yet be in the Lync 2013 Customer Preview: A choice of ways to make audio/video calls using Lync from their mobile devices. Lasko explained:
"Mobile clients will finally get the featureset people have been asking for. Now, mobile clients will be able to make audio and video calls from their mobile device using either a mobile data connection or wi-fi. Not sure if this will be available at launch or sometime after. I saw an early demo of Lync 2013 on a tablet running Windows 8, and it pretty much guaranteed I'll be buying a Windows 8 tablet when it comes out."
(I tried searching through Microsoft's documentation for information on this feature, but didn't find a mention of it. Any testers come across this one?)
There's going to be a Metro-Style version of the Lync 2013 client, currently referred to as Lync MX. (There are two Office 2013 apps that will be available both in both Win32 Desktop and Windows 8/Windows RT Metro-Style flavors. The other is OneNote MX.) But that Metro-Style Lync client is not yet available to testers, at least public ones.