Aruba has also been named a Microsoft Network Infrastructure Optimization Partner. To ensure that end-users experience high audio and video quality with Microsoft Lync, Microsoft has collaborated with several network infrastructure vendors, including Aruba, to provide prescriptive guidance on the networking requirements of Lync. Focused on the needs of Networking and IT Professionals, Network Infrastructure Optimization partners provide documentation, services, and support for companies to optimise their enterprise networks for real-time audio, video, and collaboration with Lync.
The Aruba MOVE architecture has also been certified as interoperable with Lync Server 2010, through the ArubaEdge Partner Program. “The performance testing and associated solution guide for the Aruba wireless infrastructure with Lync Server 2010 will help make it faster and easier for integrators to deploy a combined system,” said Kapil Sharma, principal group programme manager of Lync Partner Engineering at Microsoft.
YES Prep Public Schools, a free, open-enrollment public school system that serves 4,200 students across eight schools in the Houston area, needed an access network that would ensure high performance of Lync Server 2010, a collaboration suite used by teachers and staff at all eight YES Prep schools, as well as its headquarters.
“No one here has a desk phone, period,” said Troy Neal, director of information technology at YES Prep. “With the discounts that Microsoft gives K-12 on Microsoft Lync 2010, the quality with which it performs over the Aruba access network, and the cost savings associated with deploying Lync instead of traditional PBX’s, every K-12 school in the country should be doing this. We went from it taking six to nine months and $40,000 to $60,000 dollars to get a school up and running with a voice PBX to two or three weeks at between $300 and $3,000 dollars per site. As for the video and voice quality over the Aruba wireless network, let’s just say no one can tell it’s wireless, and that pretty much says it all.”
Gartner Research forecasts that growth of PC softphones, mobile softphones and IP-enabled wireless telephones will outstrip that of wired IP phones in the business telephone market from 2011 to 2015; TDM wireless telephones and both analogue and digital telephones are in decline.* The rapid adoption of softphones and wireless phones that serve as the foundation of unified communications solutions makes the availability of a highly-secure and context-aware wireless network a practical necessity.