Mar 2, 2011 10:54 GMT  ·  By

Microsoft is no longer allowing customers to try Lync Server 2010 Public Instant Messaging Connectivity before they decide to whether purchase a PIC license or not.

In this regard, the company informed customers that it has shut down the Lync PIC Trial, a move which is bound not to impact all that many customers, especially since it wasn’t exactly a hit with companies looking to bridge Microsoft’s latest unified communication solution with public IM services.

However, this does in no way mean that PIC capabilities for Lync 2010 are affected. In fact, although the PIC trial for Lync 2010 is now dead, customers can still leverage the PIC service offered by the Redmond company, free of charge.

“As of January 2011, we have decided to discontinue Lync’s free 120-day Public IM Connectivity (PIC) trial due to low demand of PIC trials. In place of the trial, we encourage customers to sign-up for the free PIC service: https://pic.lync.com,” a member of the Lync team revealed.

“At no cost, customers can still be provisioned for Windows Live and AOL with the free PIC service. However, to obtain PIC with Yahoo!, customers will need to purchase a PIC license.”

Public Instant Messaging Connectivity allows users of Lync 2010 and older versions of Microsoft’s UC offerings such as Office Communications Server 2007 R2, to enable communications and presence sharing with third-party public instant messaging services, such as Windows Live Messenger, AOL and Yahoo Messenger.

Despite the discontinuation of Lync’s free 120-day PIC trial, Public IM Connectivity Provisioning remains a valid option for Lync Server customers looking to enable federation with other IM services.

“The Lync marketing team continues to see the value of Public IM Connectivity (PIC) capabilities as a fundamental part of the Lync federation experience,” the Lync team representative added.

“This is a great feature for our customers that do business with organizations not yet on Lync, allowing our customers to communicate across network boundaries.”