Installation Skype for Business

Skype for Business is the Microsoft Unified Communications solution. It offers services such as:

• Instant messaging
• Presence information
• Web conferencing
• Video / audio conference
• Office integration
• VoIP / IP-PBX telephony
• Federation, remote users
• Chat room

We offer the service of planning, implementation and configuration of the Skype for Business solution that best suits the client. We can choose the on-premsies solution, by Skype for Business Online (Office 365) or by a hybrid solution.

This service includes:

1.- Planning

• Analysis with the client: Definition of the scope of the project, approach, use cases, objectives, key results and deadlines for the execution of the project
• Evaluation: Evaluation of infrastructure and network
• Design: Create the service architecture designing the solution with its operational processes and strategies
• Preparation: Activities related to the solution of problems found in the evaluation stage in order to prepare the Skype for Business deployment

2.- Development

• Deployment: Installation, configuration and testing of services.
• Enable users and devices

3.-Administration

• Monitoring: End-to.end quality of service monitoring
• Reporting: provide periodic reports

Skype for Business consulting

Within this consulting service, support and remote consultations are included on the Skype for Business platform. The resolution of incidents would be treated as independent proposals. The scope of this service would be:

• Support via email and telephone in Lync and/or Skype for Business technologies
• Remote support in Lync and / or Skype for Business technologies through VPN, Team Viewer or any remote connection system that facilitates the good performance of support and / or consulting
• Pre-sales consultancy and high level architectures for presales in clients, through email and / or telephone.

The level of service would be a "Next Business Day" 5x8

Skype for Business Audit

With this audit service, the current state of the communciations platform is verified, paying attention to the way of obtaining the different data and its security within the system.

Depending on the sceope agreed with the client, the different layers or levels that make up the system and its relationship can be analyzed:

• Physical infrastructure: The HW elements of the system (servers, communication system, PCs)
• Network infrastructure: performance, protocols and revision of open ports in the firewall for different Skype services
• Database management systems
• Microsoft SQL Server, topology review
• Topology review Skype for Business and its roles . 

It also includes tasks such as:

• Detection and elimination of problems that may affect the quality of the call and user experience in implementations that include the characteristics of corporate IP telephony
• Updates

The result of the audit will be a report with a simple and concise wording that highlights the problems encountered, the effects and the recommendations

Note: If the service reaches the physical and network infrastructure, a visit to the client's facilities will be required, in which information from these areas would be collected.

Skype for Business update

With this service we offer the customer the possibility of updating their system from Lync 2010 or Lync 2013 to Skype for Business 2015.

Depending on the needs of the client and the possibility or not of stopping the services, the appropiate way will be chosen to carry out the update correctly.

If you want to upgrade from Lync 2010 to Skype for Business 2015, you would choose the "side-by-side migration" option, in which a new Skype for Business infrastructure is added to the Lync 2010 topology. Later, users, services and endpoints to the Skype infrastructure before decommissioning Lync 2010. There would be no service interruption.

If the updeate is to be made from Lync 2013 to Skype for Business we would use the option "in-place upgrade" in which we have two possible modes:

• Offline upgrade: In this case, the servers with Lync 2013 automatically uninstalled Lync 2013 and installed Skype for Business 2015. The service would not be available during the update but it is the fatest way
• Move user upgrade: Used in case we can not interrupt the service and consists in installing a temporaty deployment of Lync 2013 where to host the users, services, endpoints and conferences while the update is done.

At the end of 2018 the launch of Skype for Business 2019 is planned. Avanzada 7 will also offer the update service to this new version.

Migración Skype for Business

We offer the migration service from Skype for Business on-premises to Skype for Business online.

Skype for Business online is included in Office 365.

The change to the cloud requires planning, implementation, deployment and migration. The advantages of having Skype for Business Online are mainly the fact that the customer does not have to take care of the maintenance of physical machines and can have the innovations, improvements and updates without having to plan and perform the IT administrators.

This service includes:

• A prevoious audit of the on-premises system so that the evaluation of the infrastructure, the design of the architecture of the system, the preparation of the deployment of all the services and an adaptation plan can be done.
• A development phase consisting of the installation configuration and testing of the services in the cloud, registering the users in Skype for Business Online and executing the adaptation plan end-to-end quality of service monitoring and generation of periodic reports. For this process we follow the Microsoft SOF methodology.
• End-to-end quality of service monitoring and generation of periodic reports.

For this process we follow the Microsoft SOF methodology.

Migration to Microsoft Teams

Skype for Business in the cloud is going to join Microsoft Teams. The objective is to have a single team work center with fully integrated video and voice. Microsoft Teams offers a modern cloud infrastructure that allows you to get the most out of artificial intelligente assets.

Microsoft Teams, which works with the new Skype back-end infrastructure, has been designed for the cloud with a higly scalable microservice architecture that is also efficient in terms of bandwidth consumption, provides a more robust telemetry, and allows perform maintenance tasks and updates perform maintenance tasks and updates with a minimum level of interruptions. This modern infrastructure allows easy access to Microsoft Congnifitve Services, which has functions of transcription, translation, speech recognition and automatic learning.

At the moment, there is no plan to eliminate Skype Empresarial from Office 365 subscriptions and there is no end date for support, but Microsoft will focus the investment of improvements in Microsoft Teams so that the group of the main ones will be incorporated little by little. Skype Empresarial for Office 365 functionalities.

Avanzada 7 offers the migration services from on-premise environments to Teams and also from Skype for Business in the cloud to Teams.

You can also implement a small-scale Teams pilot in which you can validate interoperability with Skype for Business. To achieve more realistic results, the pilot program must reproduce exactly how users are currently communicating and collaborating, and check what would be the ideal implementation scenario with Skype for Business and Microsoft Teams. Whether the organization is considering running Skype for Business and Microsoft Teams in parallel or switching to Microsoft Teams later, a pilot can help identify the path that should be followed for each organization.

Skype for Business integration - Asterisk

Given our extensive experience with Asterisk, we can help you integrate your Asterisk PBX with Skype for Business so that it is possible for Skype clients to call Asterisk extensions and vice versa.

This integration can be done whether you have a Skype for Business on premises solution or if you have a Skype for Business online and  you want the connection to the PSTN to be made through your Asterisk.