Businesses will be able to cut their telephony and travel costs while making savings on replacing their existing infrastructure and boosting productivity thanks to a new software product launched in Bermuda by Microsoft and its local partner Independent Consulting Solutions (ICS).Microsoft Lync 2010 was unveiled at a ‘chief information officer roundtable' discussion held and co-sponsored by Microsoft and ICS at the Fairmont Hamilton Princess on Tuesday with presentations from George Gobin, Microsoft's territory manager, and Jose Ramon Diaz, Microsoft regional director, Unified Communications.In attendance were members of Government, Belco and re/insurance companies, in addition to small business leaders.Mr Gobin said that Lync was only launched in the US last month as an upgrade of the previous Microsoft Office Communications Server and the fact it was already being rolled out in Bermuda proved that the Island was top of its priority list.He said the key was for Microsoft to present the new easy to use technology and its partners such as ICS to implement and support it.Mr Gobin said that the beauty of the system was being able to choose the method of communication needed by the decision maker to interact with their client via the telephone, email, instant messaging, and audio video and web conferencing at the touch of a button.After giving a talk on cloud computing, he turned over to Mr Diaz to introduce the new software and give a demonstration of how it works.Mr Diaz said that Sync would revolutionise the information communications technology sector in Bermuda as the next generation of productivity tools offering a host of solutions in one interface.He said that as evidenced in a study conducted by Forrester Research Inc. four months ago, the new product provided a return on investment of more than 300 percent with a break-even point of one year.According to Mr Diaz most of the savings were made in the replacement of infrastructure, being more cost effective to implement the new technology than maintain the present system, as well as reducing travel expenses through the use of conference calls, and the cost of telephone calls between regions.But, above all, he said it would improve overall productivity levels by enabling employees to save time spent on particular tasks and projects.Mr Diaz said that the application could be used by any company from a staffbase of three to 100,000 and with the backing of seven years of research in the evolution of Microsoft's latest server it has already been taken up by the likes of Sprint Communications, who have made big operational savings after replacing its previous PBX system with the new technology, Coca-Cola, Volvo, HP and Intel. Microsoft itself saved $100 million annually according to its own case study.“It provides them a freedom of space and of time and they are no longer tied to a desk in order to get their work done and they have all the tools they need at their disposal to do so,” he said.“It gives you the power of choice when it comes to communications and you decide which of those is the best and most appropriate for your needs at the time.”Steve Bull, president and chief operating officer of ICS, said that Lync would allow Bermuda-based companies with a global presence to work in real time via video conferencing.“I believe the infrastructure is now in place in Bermuda to support unified communications,” he said.“Historically bandwidth has been expensive here but prices have come down recently and now large companies based here can implement this technology worldwide and small companies who are geographically split dealing with different time zones can use it to communicate effectively and know what each other is doing, as well as being able to set up video and audio conferences with their clients internally and its enhanced features help international businesses move forward towards full compliance.”