One of the big benefits of Microsoft Lync is the ability to collaborate with ease with those outside your organization. The goal of the Lync Federation Directory Project is to make Lync users and administrators more aware of just how many organizations are available for federation—today.
While other vendors are capable of UC federation, the Microsoft Lync product is the first to bring the benefits and actually deliver federation, a compelling alternative to PSTN, to the masses.
Our opinion is that in UC federation is a communication method alternative to PSTN that is compelling enough to drive replacement of PSTN. While SIP trunks gave an IP alternative to PSTN, it largely delivered the same experience. UC federation gives all the benefits of PSTN plus:
- presence
- easy to remember ID’s like john.smith@company.com
- Instant Messaging
- free calling between organizations
- HD voice calls
- Call voice mail of partner organizations directly
- Video calls
- Desktop sharing and Web conferencing
- free communication to personal networks like LiveMessenger, Yahoo, AIM, Gmail.
What Are People Saying?
- “Love the list and outlook tool of Lync federated companies” @MikeOnUC Mike Sheridan, EVP of Sales at Aspect
- “…even in my contact list…I found some old contacts I didn’t know…have Lync.” --Lync MVP, Tom Arbuthnot in article on WCF Tool
- "I actually get upset when a company doesn't use Lync and I can't federate!" @Maxsanna
- "Loving Lync federation these days..." @ThomasVochten
- ”Lync federation is fantastic. Wish everyone was federated, makes communications SO much easier!” @mbullock
- ”Tried (“Who Can Federate” Tool) today, found several new biz partners I can federate with – great!” @aublumberg
- “…the Who Can Federate tool is an Awesome tool to work out who you can eliminate call charges with” @dave_simm
- “Love this new tool to find OCS/Lync federated contacts!” @xabulon
- On WCF Tool: “Very nice tool, thanks!” @jgelijsteen
- “Who Can Federate Tool was a great help for me” @stefansustar
- “Fantastic product…extremely useful.” @chrisbrownie
See Who You Can Lync With Using Our WCF Tool App
Using our free, Windows based WCF Tool over at Technet you can scan your own Outlook contact list and get a list of your contacts that are ready and waiting to federate! This tool is powered by the Lync Federation Directory Project’s data and end-user and admin alike can use it with ease.
- Click Here to Get the WCF Tool for Windows/PC
- NEW! Click Here to Get the WCF Tool for Windows Phone
Features of the Directory:
-CTRL+F to Find text
-Click on column header button to sort list
Lync Server federation by organization type.
By Country
How can you help the Lync Federation Directory Project?
- Add your organization to this list by {clicking here}
- Help yourself and community by seeing who in your Outlook contact list has Lync/OCS by running WCF Tool and submitting entries not currently in Lync Federation Directory Project. Takes 1 min! {click here}
- Promote http://bit.ly/lyncfed
- Do you have a domain list you want us to scan? {Click here} to email us.
- Comment or Tweet how federation helps you.
Not Using Microsoft UC & want to Federate?
Below are some tips for federating to Lync/OCS if you are using a UC solution other than Microsoft
- Cisco Interdomain Federation: Enable Interdomain Federation
- Webex IM Federation: Webex IM Federation HowTo (page 18)
- PIC
Acknowledgements & Similar Projects
- Original source of inspiration for this Lync Directory was @jiminynzl who had an NZ list but is now a global list as well. See list here..
- To see who's federated in Sweden, Australia Click Here
** NOTE: Link to this blog post, do not link to the skydrive file as that may change locations. Your welcome to download the file and use it how you want except for re posting/cross posting.
lync federation yellow pages, lync directory, UC Federation directory, The Lync Federation Project, the Lync Federation Directory Project, lync federation statistics
Shortel Federation | Cisco Federation | More Federation Gateways | Exploring Various Flavors of UC Federation | SIP Carrier marketshare down | OCS Federate Check Blog | Other
Company : NET
ReplyDeletedomain : net.com
type : open federation
note : wolrdwild
i will add that. thanks!
ReplyDeleteWe federate with e.g. Siemens, BT, Gartner Group, Accenture, Cisco, TANDBERG (now part of Cisco), Dimension Data, Symantec, EMC etc.
ReplyDeletethanks Andre for that list.
ReplyDeletesouth-ayrshire.gov.uk - by arrangement.
ReplyDeleteJohn
thanks jaipo. lets get them UK numbers up! ;-)
ReplyDeleteCompany : Iluminari Tech
ReplyDeleteDomain: Iluminaritech.com
Type: Open Feceration
Company: Imaginet
ReplyDeleteDomain: imaginet.com
Type: Open Federation
Company: Active Communications Europe B.V.
ReplyDeleteDomain: activecommunications.eu
Type: Open Federation
Company: Active Communications Hong Kong
ReplyDeleteDomain: activecoms.asia
Type: Open Federation
Company : Plantronics
ReplyDeleteDomain : Plantronics.com
Type : Open Federation
Company: Ullmark Consulting AB
ReplyDeleteDomain: ullmarkconsulting.se
Type: open federation via Office365
thanks daniel
ReplyDeleteCompany: Skinkers
ReplyDeleteDomain: skinkers.com
Type: Open Federation
Also, I keep handy the good old SRVlookup from OCS 2007 reskit to quickly check whether a domain has got OCS or Lync enabled by querying the SRV records.
ReplyDelete@max - good point. should we add a column for ocs/lync?
ReplyDeleteCompany: POSTcti
ReplyDeleteDomain: POSTcti.com
Type: Open Federation
Country : UK
Solution: Lync
Company: University of the West of England, Bristol
ReplyDeleteDomain: uwe.ac.uk
Type: Open
Country: UK
Solution: Lync
I think you've got a good point, if some restrictive company doesn't open 50000-59999 on their firewall and they use Lync they won't be able to federate with OCS, so maybe it's worth specifying it...
ReplyDeleteTo view a list of universities that are federating using Lync, see https://accountmgmt.exchange.iu.edu/OCSEduRegistry
ReplyDeletethanks @mattD!
ReplyDeleteFeel free to add Unify² up on your list...
ReplyDeleteCompany: Unify²
Domain: unifysquare.com
Type: Open Federation
Country : Global (HQ in USA)
Solution: Lync
I know of a lot more companies that you do not have on this list, but I'm not sure what I can share.
There are at least three simple ways to tell if a company has open federation:
1) Ask someone you know at the company if they can IM with people outside their company. It might help if the person is IT savvy, at least.
2)Try IMing someone. I do this regularly, and it works a great deal of the time. Someone e-mails, tweets, or hits me up on LinkedIn with questions about UC/Lync? In my experience, the odds are about fifty/fifty that they have open federation already up (higher for small or mid-size companies).
3) Try to resolve the obvious DNS records(_sipfederationTLS and so forth). They are unlikely to have been configured without federation being at least planned.
Just a word of caution on the geographic distribution, can be very misleading. Because there is one federation point per deployment/enterprise, and also because many foreign enterprises uses .com, which parent domain it is associated (such as .com) really should not be interpreted as US federation. Case in point in your list: Baidu or Bentley...
ReplyDeleteI think this is a case of overinterpreting data into something that makes no sense anymore.
Great work on the rest of the study.
Francois
Francois,
ReplyDeleteexcellent point. We should make a point of noting "unknown" when not known as opposed to putting in "usa". Excellent point.
Francois,
ReplyDeletei should add i appreciate the feedback.
let me know your thots on WCF Tool as well. ;-)
Hi, could you fix in the list - NOT belam.it, it's belam.lt (LT - Lithuania). Thanks ;)
ReplyDelete@Tadas: thanks for pointing that out! its fixed!
ReplyDeleteCompany: Hyper Technologies
ReplyDeleteDomain: hypert.com
Type: Open Federation
Country : Canada
Solution: Lync
Company: Florida College
ReplyDeleteDomain: floridacollege.edu
Type: Open
Country: US
Solution: Lync on-prem