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Enhanced Better Together: Lync Client to Support Better Together Over IP

About a month ago I noted that one of the announcements out of Enterprise Connect was the coming availability of “Enhanced Better Together” functionality for snom UC Edition phones. At that time I supposed this was purely a snom moniker, but considering various Lync Compatible IP Phone vendors are now noting coming “Enhanced Better Together” functionality I suspect this may actually be enabled via new functionality in the Microsoft Lync 2013 client.

The reasons for my thinking this is a new Lync 2013 client driven feature is that both snom and Audiocodes seem to be noting this new “Enhanced Better Together” functionality. Audiocodes specifically notes it is “Better Together support over Ethernet”. (shown below)

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snom

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Polycom

On page 13 of this UG presentation, Polycom VVX “Better Together over Ethernet” demonstrated.

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What Functionality Will “Enhanced Better Together” support?
  • At the moment snom specifically mentions click to dial and
  • “deeper integration and support for Lync collaboration and calling features” –snom click here
  • Click to Call –snom click here
  • it will work “over Ethernet” –audiocodes click here
When Will It Arrive?

Audiocodes notes “Enhanced Better Together” is a “2013 Roadmap Feature”. Not very specific, but it gives an idea.

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Will Lync Phone Edition Devices Get “Enhanced Better Together” Functionality?

At this time there is no indication that LPE devices will get this functionality. Only “Lync Compatible IP Phones” (as opposed to Lync Optimized devices) vendors seem to be noting this functionality.

Conclusion

Considering Microsoft is leaning more and more on non-Lync Phone Edition firmware based devices, this is very welcome news as users expect endpoint to be very integrated to the Lync client experience.

1 comment:

  1. I matt , fist of all thank you for your job and passion. My names is Gianluca Bellu and i run a blog on UC http://msucblog.wordpress.com in which like you i try to share my experience , about "Better Together" function for snom i develop a Lync 2010/2013 application that fill this gap , you can find at this link http://msucblog.wordpress.com/2013/02/22/new-call-via-phone-application-for-lync-2013-and-lync-2010/ . I'm also developing a Advanced version let me know if you have time to test and give me feedback. Thanks in advance . Gianluca

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