The Total Economic Impact of Microsoft Lync Server 2010

Forrester study shows ROI of over 300% for Lync Server.

Microsoft Lync 2010 delivers new capabilities and features that improve and expand unified communications capability for businesses that are eager to change the way they communicate and collaborate — even the way their employees work. Enabling rapid access to experts, peers, and decision makers via the most optimal communications method allows business to accelerate business process completion by significantly reducing human latency. Delivering Unified Communications (UC) and collaboration capabilities in a software-based approach enables IT managers to rapidly upgrade existing Microsoft Office Communications Server (OCS) environments, or replace non-Microsoft infrastructure, and offer communications and collaboration capabilities to their users within familiar Microsoft environments like Office, SharePoint, and Exchange.

Lync 2010 delivers benefits for both IT professionals and information workers. Benefits for the IT organization include reducing the cost and complexity of UC platform implementation and management. Businesses will derive greater benefits as the Lync solution is brought into more general use throughout an organization — allowing more interaction with the right people — and doing so within a single familiar Microsoft application client environment with which knowledge workers are already familiar and comfortable — accelerating adoption and improving satisfaction. This single vendor solution can reduce the complexity, uncertainty, and cost of IT and telephony operations and management, while supporting new advances in employee productivity leading to greater business value.

To understand the financial impact of investing in Lync Server 2010, Forrester conducted in-depth interviews with 12 Microsoft customers that have started using the product and compiled their results and forward-looking expectations into a composite case study of an organization with 5,000 information workers.