ConnectSolutions
Enabling Easy and Unified Communication Using On-Cloud Lync

Microsoft has made great software that combines a several communications products into a single solution. Lync is truly greater than the sum of its parts. The main challenge customers have is actually deploying the solution themselves. Most companies--and their IT departments-- want to focus on their core business. They work with ConnectSolutions so that they can gain access to experts managing the communications infrastructure, freeing them up to focus on projects that drive competitive differentiation for their own products and services.

Headquartered in San Francisco, CA, ConnectSolutions is a Microsoft solution provider offering a full array of communication and collaboration solutions. The company help its clients effectively communicate across the globe using Lync. Hosting Lync along with all the functions the clients require, like Enterprise Voice, ConnectSolutions manages the communication process on its client’s behalf, optimizing its cost effectiveness. The service billing is based upon the minute usage of the communication platform. “Our customers get the advantages of an onpremise Lync Server deployment without dedicating resources to manage it,” says Michael Fitzpatrick Jr., areal-time web communication technology specialist and CEO & co-founder of ConnectSolutions.

The firm also integrates with Microsoft’s Office 365 offering unified messaging and auto-attendant facility as an add-on to the client’s Lync deployment. ConnectSolutions stays ahead of the crowd through its services that helps the clients manage their account with a self-service portal allowing them to provision new users, and easily generate new phone numbers.

We make the client’s core business processes more effective, intelligent, and efficient through Customer Relationship Management integration

“With our CoSoTeamUP, anyone can go to our website and deploy Microsoft Lync with full Enterprise Voice in just a few minutes, with a free 30-day trial so you can run a pilot, or deploy your whole organization. It’s the only Microsoft Lync solution that allows this instant-on experience,” says Fitzpatrick.

The company’s efficiency in meeting the end-user demand for Unified Communication can be depicted by the success story of General Motors. GM needed a communication solution for the purpose of training and certifying the sales representatives and mechanics across North America before a new vehicle actually released into the market. ConnectSolutions helped the client setup an effective communication system which made it easy for dealerships to receive, ondemand training videos and guidance. As a result, GM acquired more than 8,000 sites for satellite delivery, providing video to more than 300,000 devices in North America.

Fitzpatrick believes true business transformation includes bringing Lync into the software that would be at the core of businesses. He sees most organizations as still in the first phase of Unified Communications, which is the process of combining communications features into a single product. This is part of a full enterprise Lync solution, which combines instant messaging, presence, audio calls, video calls, conference calling and screen sharing, and makes that single software solution available on any device, anywhere in the world, with a single login and phone number.

“The next phase is what gets me really excited. That’s where true business transformation takes place. That’s when organizations bring Lync into the software that is at the core of their business,” says Fitzpatrick. ConnectSolutions is working with a number of companies on integrations into Customer Relationship Management (CRM) software, or other industry-specific solutions.

ConnectSolutions has successfully lessened the capital investment of their clients in communication by shifting it to cloud from on-premise hardware. Going forward, the company is planning to expand their services. “We are now focused on developing additional features, services and integrations to increase business value for our customers, says Fitzpatrick. For this, ConnectSolutions is building the ability to listen to their customers and adapt to their needs faster than ever. “The future of Unified Communications is taking it beyond software consolidation, and putting communications directly into other solutions,” concludes Fitzpatrick.