“But people saw value in federation. We are federated with most of our suppliers and partners. I have a lot of friends who work in MS in the US. I can see their presence, IM them, go to a call or video.”
Dimension Data has offices in 42 countries and its employees use instant messaging and presence to make the most of calling in different time zones.
An end to phone tag
Presence has been a feature largely reserved for enterprise. With Microsoft Office 365 and Lync Online, it will become available for small businesses to trial and use with very little effort. It is hailed as a time-saving feature that kills off the annoying phone-tag routine – two people repeatedly calling each other at times when each is unavailable.
Think about how much you use your phone to call someone on their mobile and the person doesn’t answer, Walshe says.
“It’s probably about half the time. You would normally then try their desk phone.
“Across time zones you might have a very small window to catch up and if you miss them you will have to wait another day. Presence lets you cut out the dead time.”
Lync is integrated with Exchange and resolves against appointments in the calendar.
Presence is updated according to availability; if users have a meeting entered in their calendar, Lync will show they are busy. Lync can also be integrated with the phone system to show when a user is on a call.
“There’s no point in me ringing you if you’re on the phone. I can IM you and say can you ring me when you’re available.
"Or I can see that you’re busy until 2 so I’ll call then, or if you’re busy until the end of the day I’ll drop you an email,” Walshe says. “It really is a very powerful tool in business.”
Hold on to the PABX
Cloud-based communications vendors such as Fonality already have services which can replace the on-premise phone exchange (PABX) for small businesses.
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