We are evaluating Lync as a replacement for Barracuda IM. With the Barracuda IM service, our salespeople were able log into other IM services (aim, msn, yahoo) through the public IM networks feature and communicate with their clients via Barracuda IM, regardless of the IM service their clients were using.

Now that we are trying out Lync, I do not see a way to communicate with anyone else via IM who is not also a Lync/Skype user, which is truly a gamestopper for our sales people as they are not selling anything to our own employees but rather a to a variety of companies using a variety of IM clients.

So my question.. Is Lync primarily for inter-company IMing or is there some public IM network option we are missing somewhere with Lync? Will our salespeople ever have the capability through Lync to IM clients on msn, aim, or yahoo messenger?

thanks,

Josh

Hi Josh,

At present, Lync user can communicate with the user who use MSN/Skype.

Federation with Yahoo! and AOL are no longer available.

For more details,

https://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/dn458579.aspx

Best regards,

Eric