Alcatel Unleashed

Hi,

we are planing an integration of Lync in our OXE phone system. We have a OXE Network including 4 Nodes and more the 20 remote locations. Now we want to implement Lync as UC solution. What is your opinion /experience regarding this topic? Which integration would you prefer? Lync via SIP Trunk (Audiocodes Gateway); via RCC or via clientintegration?

We see a lot of benefits on MS Lync. With Lync 2013 we can do a federation to Skype networks. We also have Lync standard licensed for a lot of people.

Thanks a lot for your help,

Regards.

There was in intwerworking report for this in the past, not sure if this is still supported officially.
Search the forum as the topic was already debated.

Easiest "Direct SIP" mode (i.e. SIP trunk) from Lync to OXE is not supported up to now AFAIK from both sides.
So you won't get any support for the problems appeared if you choose such an integration.
You'd better contact ALU Presale guy to discuss all nuts and bolts of such an integration.

Thank you very much for your answers. I think Audiocodes provides a certified gateway for the direct sip usage of oxe and lync.
I think the management of an direct sip integartion will need a lot of work because of the many dial plans that must be maintenanced. What do you think is the better way for integration, direct sip or rcc?

pykasso wrote:I think Audiocodes provides a certified gateway for the direct sip usage of oxe and lync.

That's true. ALU and MS have announced interoperability with AudioCodes HW.

pykasso wrote:I think the management of an direct sip integartion will need a lot of work because of the many dial plans that must be maintenanced.

Actually it is not dial plans. The main point is SIP implementation on both sides. SIP RFCs are getting updated frequently and a new ones coming out. So it is not easy for any (HW or SW) vendor to keep interoperability with the different equipment. May be a basic cal would work immediately but then call transfer, call forwarding, conference etc problems appear.

pykasso wrote:I
What do you think is the better way for integration, direct sip or rcc?

If you use OXE as a plain SIP-PSTN gateway then direct SIP is the best and the easiest way. I would personally opt for direct SIP between OXE and Lync.
But if you want add some UC functions to OXE users then you need to look to OpenTouch/ICS solutions from ALU.

We already implemented several OXE - MS OCS/Lync "integrations" using Audiocodes Mediant gateways.
It's not really an integration, more a connection between 2 ipt systems.
This configuration works great for making calls between OXE and MS users and e.g. use OXE trunks to make/receive calls in OCS/Lync clients.
But things like presence for OXE phones in MS OCS/Lync is not available.

For a full integration you need both MS Lync and Alcatel-Lucent ICS. You can integrate the ICS client with the MS client on the users desktop, making things like presence also possible for Alcatel-Lucent phone sets.
In this setup you can also choose to use MS for IM/Presence and ICS for making phone calls. This will save you on MS Enterprise voice licenses.
Disadvantage of this solution is that you need both MS and ICS licenses for each user.

I'm not really sure, but I think in the near future there will also be a federation possible between OpenTouch and MS Lync.

So it depends on your situation and wishes which method best soothes your company.