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GREAT QUESTIONS about last week’s RTM Announcement!

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Last Wednesday I posted that we'd released Lync to manufacturing, meaning our code is locked and the product is ready. We received some great questions as a result, so I wanted to address a few of them here.  

First, there are still a few more steps before Lync is officially available. As I noted in the blog our worldwide launch event is on the calendar for Wednesday, November 17th, 2010.  The final milestone, known as GA or general availability, is December 1st, when existing customers who have maintained their SA (Software Assurance license), as well as new Lync customers, will be able to download Lync Server 2010 from the Microsoft Volume Licensing Service Center (VLSC).

The launch event is when we officially acknowledge and celebrate the release, rather than the day it is made available broadly.  Microsoft pricelists are updated on the first of every month, and Lync appears on the December pricelist, which was made public yesterday. Contact your account manager, a Microsoft licensing specialist or one of our partner resellers for assistance if you have questions about how Lync and our volume licensing programs work.

For those who want to download a version of the product prior to General Availability, a 180-Day Evaluation Edition will be available on November 17, 2010 here: https://www.Microsoft.com/Lync. If you want to kick the tires even earlier, the Release Candidate bits are currently available for evaluation, though at this point we'd encourage you to wait for the final release product.

Finally, we also received a few questions about our roadmap for Lync Online. My earlier blog post mentioned that Lync Online would include federated IM and presence with Windows Live Messenger, AOL, Yahoo!, Google and Jabber - as federation with each of these public IM networks is already included in the on premises version of Lync. The initial version of Lync Online will federate with Windows Live Messenger, and in future Lync Online releases, we expect federation with additional networks.

Last week's responses to my post just showed that there is a crowd of people eagerly awaiting the public release of Lync and we are so excited that these final milestones are in the near future. Thanks for your questions and feedback!

Kirk Gregersen, Sr. Director

Microsoft Lync

Comments

  • Anonymous
    November 11, 2010
    Hi. When will Lync be availabe at MSDN for Partners? Best Regards. Rui Cardoso rcardoso@mypartner.pt

  • Anonymous
    November 11, 2010
    When will Lync be supported on SQL Server 2008 R2? And why not on day 1? What ever happened to eating your own dog food?

  • Anonymous
    November 11, 2010
    Is it still required to have a PIC license for federated IM with Yahoo, Live etc?

  • Anonymous
    November 14, 2010
    It looks like there is one public article with the purpose for the internal boses to fix the KPI dates in October. And then public explanations follow shortly that in reality it will come almost one month later... :) Just say "RTM version will be released at 1st of December", and will be no explanations needed. And for the user its better later, but more quality, less bugs.

  • Anonymous
    November 15, 2010
    Can installations of the 180 day trial be converted over to a licensed release when purchased?

  • Anonymous
    December 01, 2010
    Anyone know when it will be released today?