Why Colleges Are Taking a Hybrid Approach to UC

The University of California, San Diego took a practical approach to deploying unified communications.

The university first explored the technology by having the 215 members of its central IT organization test the features offered within Microsoft Lync, says Assistant Vice Chancellor and CIO Min Yao. He says the IT staff uses presence, instant messaging and video, but not softphones. 

“The reason we did not rush into bringing softphones into our UC solution at this time is because we would like to get some more return on investment out of our existing private branch exchange system,” Yao explains. “We are providing email and voice services for more than 28,000 UC San Diego employees, and even a small license fee per user could easily add up to a big cost.”

However, Yao acknowledges that the university will ultimately converge its voice and data networks, probably when it does its next upgrade in a few years. He believes that a converged voice and data network will raise IT service efficiency.

Yao says Microsoft Lync integrates well with many of the Microsoft products that the university already uses. For example, there’s great interest in using the collaboration functions within Lync that allow users to drag a SharePoint file or PowerPoint presentation to the screen and easily share information. He expects to offer Microsoft Lync to the campus community within the next six months.

Rich Costello, senior research analyst for unified communications for IDC, says that while many colleges start by using video collaboration for internal meetings among faculty, staff and administrators, some have extended it for remote education and external apps. “Colleges are looking at these tools for using remote links to teach a larger audience and reach more students,” he says. “For example, medical schools now use video collaboration to leverage highly skilled or subject-matter experts from other locations to teach medical students.”

Mountaineers Roll Out a Hybrid Approach

Mark Six, executive director of the Office of Information Technology at West Virginia University, says WVU also plans a hybrid approach to UC.

WVU will use Microsoft Lync for presence, instant messaging, collaboration and video conferencing, but will also keep its Cisco Systems VoIP network. Six expects the entire Lync deployment to be complete by the end of the year.

“The collaboration features within Lync are very appealing,” Six says. “We like the integration with Office 365 — for example, it’s easy to set up a meeting and share a PowerPoint presentation. The technology lets us modernize our communications and applications at the same time.”