While you can use Lync as a complete softphone solution, many of my customers still have users who prefer to have a hard phone on their desk. For best user experience, click-to-call is the most obvious feature they are using.
If you look at the Lync solution ,Lync Aries devices and the USB better-together feature are the way to go to have integration between a PC and a desk phone. Many of my users are currently using this feature and are very happy with it.
So what options do you have if you decided on investing in SNOM phones instead of the Aries phones? So far none.... but this changes now!
A new call-via-phone app has been published lately to facilitate click-to-call with SNOM phones on the latest Apollo firmware. The bad news is that it's not yet clear if this will be a free or commercial application (it has a 30 day limitation but linked to a freeware section), and this first release will probably not be production-ready.
Some Screenshots
A new Tools menu-item has been added to configure the application
Configuration window
End-user experience for click to call
Source: http://msucblog.wordpress.com/2012/10/06/call-via-phone-app/
As far as I know, similar functionality is not (yet) available for the Aries phones because they do not have an API built in to trigger the remote call..... Maybe a good idea for future firmware releases, Microsoft?
*UPDATE*
- There is a 64-bit version available right now
- The author is planning to implement it at a customer so the stability of the app might be very good.