How Microsoft Dogfooded Lync 2010

Lync 2010 made no exception to Microsoft’s rule of dogfooding products, and now the Redmond company is ready to share the experience with the world.

Microsoft traditionally adopts and uses its own software solutions more often than not even while they’re still in development, a process known as dogfooding, or eating its own dog food.

The software giant’s latest iteration of unified communications offerings has been deployed by Microsoft IT on no less than seven worldwide sites replacing older PBX systems.

A Microsoft IT showcase describing the Lync 2010 “Dogfood” Deployment is now available for download free of charge from the Redmond company.

“As part of the Lync 2010 dogfood deployment, Microsoft IT (MSIT) replaced PBX systems in seven sites located in the three major regions: APJ, EMEA, and the Americas. MSIT implemented user adoption strategies that resulted in a very successful deployment with high user satisfaction scores,” Microsoft explains.

According to the software giant, the dogfooding program involved giving employees a chance to opt whether or not they wanted to use Lync 2010.

Over 28,000 of them volunteered to be part of the testing program and 26,800 were subsequently migrated to Lync 2010.

Since it was deployed, Lync 2010 enabled users to make over 104,000 conference calls and almost 80,000 video conferences.

Microsoft IT also notes that it ran into some issues especially related to the Lync Attendee Client.

“The Lync Attendee client was slightly confusing to users and there were early problems installing the client due to locked-down desktops,” Microsoft revealed.

“The Lync Web Application has slightly different capabilities than the Lync Attendee Client, which also complicated matters. The Lync Attendee experience is much improved after making small changes to the client and after users have had more practice.”

Microsoft Lync Server 2010 RTM is available for download here.

Microsoft Lync Server 2010 SDK is available for download here.

Microsoft Lync Server 2010 Attendee is available for download here.

Microsoft Lync Group Chat is available for download here.

Microsoft Lync Server 2010 Group Chat is available for download here.