We have just setup federation with 2 of our clients and it could not have been any easier.
We allowed the external communication and simply had the clients add: “
sipfed.online.lync.com” for bajaconsulting.com to their trusted domains. (see http://lyncdup.com/2011/04/how-to-enable-office365-lync-online-to-federate-with-lync-on-prem/ for a great walk through).