When will Microsoft add call center to Lync?

Microsoft Lync is often compared to specific contact center type software and of course it comes up short. Lync is not meant to satisfy this need, there is a functional ACD which works very well, but from a feature/functionality and cost positioning point of view it's of course not meant for structured contact centers. It's functionally a departmental ACD. Lync can be considered as Personal branch exchange, not Private branch exchange. It takes the knowledge worker or information worker as a baseline. This implies that the individual becomes ones own office assistant, ones own receptionist, etc. Lync doesn't need any call center, because no knowledge worker or information worker needs any.



The platform called UCMA on which OCS and Lync are built is very rich and enables  advanced capabilities such as programmatic escalation to conference, silent monitoring, barge in and recording, etc.
There are lots of contact centers being built on that platform. Not all are public like Aspect, some, like ExtendHealth, are internal to companies for their own purpose, and are used to run their entire business. Aspect is partially owned by Microsoft and they now have two solutions designed for Microsoft Lync.

So Lync is not a contact center product, but the Lync platform is not only credible but increasingly "the" platform for building contact centers on.

Innovation in the call center space for Lync will be driven by the 3rd party ISVs; by providing SDKs and APIs to interact with the Lync framework Microsoft is allowing industry needs to drive innovation and development to that part of the product and that is something that simply cannot be done on top of other UC platforms.
Call Center on Lync will be fine and we will see tremendous movement in this space as Lync gains market share, and that is something of a certainty.

Microsoft partners with a number of Independent Software VendorsISV's (including Aspect) for various 3rd-party solutions - contact center included:http://lync.microsoft.com/en-us/Partners/Pages/application-partners.aspx