Obama for America Selected Lync for Its Campaign Communications

Over the past few years, candidates for public office at all levels have sought to take advantage of the latest technology and communications tools to make their political campaigns run more efficiently.

President Barack Obama’s 2012 reelection campaign was no different. Obama for America selected Microsoft Lync as its communications platform, keeping its hundreds of staff and volunteers connected to supporters – and each other. Being fully mobile on Lync also enabled their IT staff to support other mission-critical activities to keep the campaign running smoothly.

“When the campaign began in 2011, we couldn’t predict how big it would get or when, so scalability and deployment efficiency were two of the most important features for us,” says Rajeev Chopra, president of the MIS Department Inc. in Chicago and chief information officer at Obama for America. “Controlling our systems with Lync also provided much more flexibility.”

The campaign was looking to upgrade from a private branch exchange system to a more flexible, cloud-based solution in its Chicago headquarters and in some states during the 2012 elections. The solution they needed would have to scale and adapt to support thousands of mission-critical calls in multiple locations at any given time – and Lync was the answer.

During the campaign, the number of people connected via Lync was more than 2,000, which increased at key points, such as during the debates and the Democratic National Convention. Lync was able to quickly and easily scale to meet demand, and Obama for America’s primary phone number and headquarters voter hotline handled calls that numbered in the hundreds of thousands per day.

Get the full story over on the Microsoft News Center.

Posted by Jeff Meisner
Editor, The Official Microsoft Blog

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