When Microsoft announced Skype for Business earlier this year, I was struck by how radically Lync Online would change and how much Lync Server wouldn't. That is to say, Skype for Business Server gets a new UI and Call via Work replaces Remote Call Control, plus plenty of other stuff. But it's not a major revision like the platform has had in the past, and what's new isn't as significant as what's new in Skype for Business Online.
It makes sense, really. Microsoft's hosted UC service has long had limitations when it comes to delivering a complete business telephony feature set. So this is where Microsoft developers focused most of their attention this time around.
However, there will be a major change in how Skype for Business Server (and Skype for Business Online too, for that matter) supports large-scale conferences, long a problem area for Microsoft. Despite acquisitions, integrations, and enhancements, meeting scalability has been decreasing, rather than increasing. This has opened opportunities for partners, which have stepped in to provide Lync with the massively scalable meeting functionality that it lacked natively. But with Skype for Business broadcast meetings, introduced in preview mode as Skype Meeting Broadcast, on the horizon, Microsoft is about to (re)introduce a webcasting service, and one that promises to scale beyond anything it previously offered.
Since Skype Meeting Broadcast will directly compete with partners' comparatively mature and well-established solutions, let's take a look at some of the options enterprises deploying Skype for Business will have when setting up large meetings with hundreds or thousands of participants.
Background
In olden days (2003 to be exact) of Office Communications Server (OCS), Microsoft acquired a provider whose Web conferencing service became Microsoft Office Live Meeting. Depending on the license purchased, Live Meeting supported up to either 250 or 1,250 participants; it was available as a service or as an on-premises solution. Round about 2007, Microsoft enhanced Live Meeting to support up to 2,500 participants, which remained the limit throughout the OCS years. When Lync debuted in early 2011, Microsoft discontinued the Live Meeting service while rolling its Web conferencing functionality into Lync.
Curiously, when Lync inherited Live Meeting's Web conferencing capabilities, scalability took a hit. Rather than maintaining or increasing Live Meeting's 2,500-participant limit, Lync 2010 supported only up to 250 participants. Businesses with Lync Server on premises can up this to 1,000 by dedicating server resources to large meetings. But in this scenario the server needs to be dedicated to setting up large meetings regardless of whether or not any are taking place. So unless a company is continually having meetings with hundreds or thousands of attendees, those resources go unused most of the time.
For companies with Lync Online, 250 participants remains the max despite Microsoft promising an increase to 1,000 as early as 2011 and as recently as 2014. Microsoft's Gurdeep Singh Pall, corporate VP, Information Platform & Experience, gave a figure of 1,000 to 2,000 during his Lync Conference keynote last year (forward to the 41:20 minute mark).
As Lync Online morphed into Skype for Business Online, large-scale meetings remained capped at 250. And native webcast scalability in Skype for Business Server remains the same as in Lync Server: 250 or 1,000, depending on that dedicated server resources thing.
Microsoft nerfing Lync's ability to support large meetings shouldn't raise too many eyebrows. Part of Microsoft's genius is that Skype for Business, Lync, and OCS deliver just enough communications features to satisfy most businesses. You need something fancy, like a door phone, wallboard, or IVR? Go talk to a partner. Ditto with super large conferences. Someone at Microsoft must have decided that most businesses wouldn't need a UC platform that natively supports Web conferences with more than 250, or at the outside 1,000, people. And if some did, that's where partners could step in.
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Large Skype for Business Meetings From Partners: VBrick
Among the most conspicuous of these partners has been VBrick. The company has sold solutions that let Microsoft's UC software support massively scalable meetings since 2010, when Live Meeting just got the boot and OCS/Lync customers were trying to figure out what to do.
Fast-forward five years and the company's chief solution for this is VBrick Lync Webcast. Presenters set up a standard Lync meeting, inviting essentially any number -- hundreds, thousands, tens of thousands -- of attendees. Video and content streams feed into VBrick's Enterprise Content Distribution Network, which transcodes the video, routes it to nodes closest to attendees, and dynamically adjusts the frame rates based on available network bandwidth and device type. VBrick Distributed Media Engines integrate with a company's Lync server, authenticating users based on their Lync credentials. Attendees view the live meeting via standard Web browsers. They can chat with each other or presenters during the meeting, and afterwards access the recorded webcast, which is stored automatically on the VBrick video management platform. 
VBrick has traditionally sold its large-scale meeting capability as a premises-based solution, with enterprises making a sizable capital investment in the various systems and software that support meetings at scale. A cloud delivery model is also available, with annual pricing on a per-user basis.
Large Skype for Business Meetings From Partners: Kollective
Kollective Technology, formerly Kontiki, is another developer whose name regularly comes up when talking about making Lync meetings massively scalable. Its solution comprises:
Two years ago Kollective introduced Kontiki Broadcaster for Lync. Rather than using Webcaster to set up and manage a meeting, producers use the Kontiki Lync Broadcast Manager. This management interface is part of the Kontiki Lync Broadcast Server, software that resides on premises and integrates with a company's Lync Server software. Active Directory integration gives producers access to the groups of employees that will be invited to attend the meeting. When the meeting is about to start, attendees receive a Lync message that provides a link clickable for launching a Kontiki client to play the webcast. And the ECDN streams the webcast in the same way it would if it were coming from Kontiki Webcaster. (Intercall Webcasting Services and Katura Webcasting likewise use the Kollective ECDN to stream live and recorded meetings.)
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Large Skype for Business Meetings From Microsoft
In May, Microsoft announced its own large-scale meeting offering -- and it could obviate the need for partner solutions. Topping out at 10,000 attendees, Skype Meeting Broadcast is not quite as scalable as the VBrick and Kontiki offerings, but it nonetheless targets the same market as these partner-provided solutions. This cloud-architected service is expected to be available later this year.
Like the VBrick and Kontiki solutions, Skype for Business broadcast meetings combines multiple video and content streams to create a live Web meeting that's available in different encoding formats and at different bit rates depending on which device types and networks attendees are using. Microsoft distributes the video across the Azure Content Delivery Network, making it available in nodes geographically close to attendees. Enterprises will be able to minimize the impact of dozens, hundreds, or thousands of separate video streams overwhelming their Internet connections through a combination of edge caching (a single stream can send content to Web servers running Application Request Routing; the Web servers store the video stream locally and make it available to attendees across the LAN and SDN (attendees' desktops cache packets and effectively become access points that make the content available to nearby attendees).
Skype Meeting Broadcast leverages a number of Microsoft and partner technologies. These include:
Additionally, Skype Meeting Broadcast offers an interesting DVR-type control feature that lets individual attendees pause or rewind a meeting that's in progress. This lets latecomers to a live broadcast, for example, view the meeting from the beginning rather than only see what is being presented live.
Microsoft will not support audio-only participants dialing in from the PSTN at launch, but will add this capability later. The same goes for application and desktop sharing. This capability is on the roadmap, but initially presenters wanting to share their desktops with attendees will need to use an HDMI dongle from Black Magic or Magewell.
Large Skype for Business Meetings: Microsoft Vs. Partners
All in all, broadcast meetings is an impressive bringing together of multiple Microsoft technologies to provide Skype for Business customers something entirely new -- or, rather, something entirely new for Microsoft, since, as we've seen, partners have been delivering similar solutions and services for years. Skype Meeting Broadcast promises to thrust Microsoft back into a Web conferencing services market that it abandoned when axing Live Meeting. It promises to be much more scalable than Live Meeting ever was, and to deliver capabilities that rival established offerings from third-party developers. Moreover, it will be able to support both online and premises-based versions of Skype for Business, whereas other solutions are much more focused on the latter. And, Skype Meeting Broadcast's use of Azure parallels the increased role Azure is playing in the delivery of Skype for Business Online.
That said, Skype Meeting Broadcast remains under development. Until it hits general availability, it remains unclear how tightly Microsoft will be able to stitch together the many threads of Skype for Business, Azure, Yammer, Event Builder, and the rest. Right now it seems rather kludged together. Hopefully that won't be the case when it reaches the market.
Additionally, as far as I can tell Skype Meeting Broadcast is not backward compatible with Lync. That is, attendees with Lync clients cannot join a broadcast meetings event. They first need to upgrade to the Skype for Business client. This could be an issue in the near term for enterprises that do not immediately upgrade to the new software. But it's unlikely to be a problem a year or two down the road.
VBrick and Kollective's solutions, by contrast, are both mature and established. Each has been on the market for years and is regularly updated based on customer feedback. Each is developed by a company that specializes in large-scale meetings, is entirely focused on this market, and has non-Microsoft-oriented webcasting technology that it can bring to bear when developing solutions for Microsoft's UC platforms.
However, I don't get the sense that either VBrick or Kontiki has garnered a large base of Lync customers. If they are unable to do so they may readily cede this market to Microsoft and focus on delivering webcasting solutions that are less tied to a specific company's UC platform. But in order for this to happen Microsoft will need to prove that it has the superior product -- something it won't be able to do until Skype Meeting Broadcast is not just shipping but a mature solution for enterprises hosting large meetings.
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