Appendix B Adoption Throughout this book, we've discussed a wide range of topics, explored details of the Lync product, and even delved into integration with third-party products. However, all this technical information is not enough to ensure that you have a successful experience with Lync. Lync is a Unified Communications platform and, as such, has the potential to radi- cally change a business. In particular, it changes the way people communicate. There are so many potential benefits of Unified Communications that it has become one of the top Chief Information Officer (CIO) priorities in recent years. However, unless this radical change is man- aged correctly within a business, it can easily cause anxiety and resentment, which hinder the implementation of the technology and slow the pace at which a business sees a return on its investment. After all, a business is simply a bunch of people who know things, and without them all you have is a shell, perhaps a brand. You need to take these people with you on your journey with Lync. This appendix aims to show you how! Understanding the Power of UC Unified Communications (UC) is one of the big buzz phrases in IT, rivaled only by "the Cloud" and "virtualization." It is notoriously hard to define, and people have various understandings of its meaning. For us, unified communications is all about providing customers--both end users and more widely the companies they work for--with the ability to work efficiently by commu- nicating and collaborating through whatever means necessary, wherever and whenever they need to work. This communication might be either one-to-one or multiparty, either internal or across organizations. Communication should be woven tightly into an organization and inte- grated with the business process to drive productivity and efficiency. In that sense, UC could be thought of more as ubiquitous communication. Of course, that utopian vision requires a fair amount of work in the background. There is the technical challenge of integrating and providing communication modalities such as voice, video, instant messaging (IM), email, voice mail, SMS, and fax, which we have covered in depth in this book. However, in many ways, the technical challenge is far simpler than changing the culture of a business, making information about people and process freely available, and changing the way people work and communicate. Any company that embarks on a Unified Communications project needs to clearly identify why they are doing so, what they must achieve, and how they will bring this change to users. The Promise As you can see, UC has immense power. It can allow people to communicate more efficiently than ever before, potentially saving companies millions in hard cash in several ways. For example, instead of spending money on a cents-per-minute basis with third-party conferencing