Skype for Business Unleashed

Alex Lewis, MCITP, CISSP, has a mixed background in technology and business spanning 20 years. He has worked with a wide range of environments, from small organizations to large enterprises requiring complex or custom communications solutions, and is responsible for architecting and implementing some of the largest Lync and Skype for Business deployments in the world. Alex is a strong believer in aligning technology to business goals to create a competitive business advantage. Including titles on Active Directory and Exchange, and three on Lync, Alex has participated in writing nine books from 2004 to present. He is currently Vice President at Event Zero, the global leader in real-time analytics for Skype for Business. In his spare time Alex enjoys scuba diving and beach volleyball.

Pat Richard is a Unified Communications consultant and PowerShell Developer who began working with Microsoft Exchange and evolved into working with the full Microsoft Unified Communications stack. He has been involved in some of the best-known deployments and migrations in the world, including those in the defense, finance, government, real estate, manufacturing, and services fields. Pat maintains the renowned ehloworld.com blog, which focuses on solutions, ideas, scripts, and information centered on PowerShell and Unified Communications. His PowerShell scripts, Excel design calculators, and other tools have been used by many of the major consulting firms, large enterprises, small- and medium-sized shops, and even Microsoft Consulting Services to deploy and manage millions of seats on Exchange Server, Lync Server, and Skype for Business Server. Pat is the host of the popular Exchange/Lync/Skype for Business/Office 365 focused podcast “The UC Architects” and has been recognized by Microsoft and awarded the Microsoft MVP award more than 10 times across three products. He has contributed to several books, spoken at international conferences, and has been spotlighted by some Microsoft marketing campaigns.

Phil Sharp is a Unified Communications consultant with over 10 years of experience working with Microsoft Unified Communications solutions. His career in Microsoft UC began with one of the first Office Communications Server 2007 voice deployments in the U.S. He has extensive experience architecting, implementing, and supporting Microsoft Active Directory, Office Communications Server 2007/R2, Lync Server 2010/2013, Skype for Business, and Exchange for organizations of all sizes and verticals. In Phil’s current role at Modality Systems, he leads a world-class team of Microsoft UC consultants who specialize in telephony integration of Lync and Skype for Business.

Rui Maximo started in the Microsoft Skype for Business product team at Microsoft since the early days of RTC in 2003. As a lead program manager, he managed multiple areas of responsibility on the server side, including AD schema, topologies, management, setup, Enterprise Voice, and CWA. Rui has authored over 40 technical articles, training videos, whitepapers, and multiple books.

In addition to writing technical books, Rui is the principal software architect of the Security Filters (www.lync-solutions.com), a suite of seven security products that protect Skype for Business Server against denial-of-service (DoS) and over 20 different types of attacks, provide granular control of federation traffic, and restrict access to only authorized mobile devices. He consults and does contract work for clients looking to integrate their products with Skype for Business Server 2015.