<p>There are many unified communications platforms to choose from, and colleges and universities are increasingly deploying UC to save money and increase collaboration. Just how they get there depends largely on institutional needs and available budgets. Choices abound: Cloud-based or on-campus systems? Converged infrastructure or separate phone lines?</p><p>At Georgia Military College, which used Lync's forerunner, Microsoft's Office Communications Server (OCS), for several years, by 2011 the shift to Microsoft Lync UC marked a natural transition.</p><p>"Eliminating the cost of maintaining landlines was the major driver at first for using OCS and then Lync," GMC Lync Administrator Ryan Chambers says. "But we're also happy with all the things that we can do with it, such as desktop and application sharing."</p><p>Chambers says a Lync-based VoIP phone system has produced a 30 to 40 percent cost savings over the college's old public branch exchange system. GMC uses Lync as its platform for instant messaging and online meetings. Lync provides video conferencing capabilities and ties into the college's MS Exchange 2010 voicemail, which sends an email alert when a message is left, and can even supply a transcript. Although the college uses Office 365 for student email, officials aren't ready to move UC, or the phone system, from its local Lync installation to the cloud, Chambers says. "If there's a problem with a cloud solution, it's out of our hands to fix it, and we're not quite comfortable with that yet."</p><p><a href="http://www.edtechmagazine.com/higher/article/2013/10/microsoft-lync-powers-communication-cloud-and-ground">Keep reading...</a></p>