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Skype for Business or Lync with a Facelift? And how does IE WebRTC fit in?

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lync as skype

Two days ago, Microsoft announced that “Skype for Business” will roll out in 2015. In addition to having retired Messenger, Skype will be doing the same to Lync, Microsoft Office’s longstanding answer to business videoconferencing and collaboration.  However, within the announcement were the following three sentences:

“…we’re adopting the familiar Skype icons for calling, adding video and ending a call. We’ve added the call monitor from Skype, which keeps an active call visible in a small window even when a user moves focus to another application.

“At the same time, Skype for Business keeps and improves on all of the capabilities of Lync, including content sharing and telephony.”

It appears that Lync isn’t being retired so much as being overlaid with Skype’s GUI and being rebranded. I was tempted to argue whether or not this really counted as being “Skype”, but then realized that a large part of what makes Skype Skype actually IS that interface.

Something like this was expected, of course, ever since Microsoft acquired Skype.  It’s a smart move:  Skype, despite its immense popularity in the private world, was unable to transfer that popularity into the business world due to security concerns and Read more

Microsoft Acquires Skype — Video Collaboration World Yawns

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The twittering began a while ago, then came the announcement that an announcement would come, and now…it is announced.

Microsoft will acquire Skype for $8.5 Billion in cash.

Good for Microsoft to get access to the Skype user community with hundreds of millions of loyalists.  Good for Skype to have the 800 lb. gorilla in software as its partner to provide marketing channels and deep pockets.

800-pound-gorilla-in-software-resized-600

A client asked for our thoughts.  Here are what come to mind first:

1) Culture Clash —

  • Skype is a peer to peer product developed to help people go around the price-gouging of telecom monopolies via internet and gave its service away for free, for years and still does
  • Microsoft develops something for everyone, enterprise wide, is the de facto standard for many of its markets and has for years been the subject of claims that it is “The Great Satan” or “Evil Empire” in the software world for abusing its market power and ruthless commitment to enhancing its own profits

2) Free — Many people use Skype because it is free and you can access millions of friends, family, etc.  Does Microsoft intend to keep it free?

3) Usability — Skype is simple, easy to get started with and has lots of nice features.  Cross your fingers that Skype’s usability influences Microsoft’s development path and not the other way around.

4) Control — Skype does not have a feature-rich IT control suite, user permissions, rights, bandwidth constraints, domains, profiles, etc.  Expect Microsoft to layer a lot of that functionality in.  Will that make Skype less attractive to users even as it becomes more palatable to IT and Network managers?

5) Security — Skype has some significant, and often-discussed security vulnerabilities as well as the basic challenge of peer-to-peer architecture.  Add Skype (a big target) to Microsoft (the biggest target there is) and you can expect a series of security attacks while newly integrated products are rolled out by Microsoft.  Hopefully no one gets hurt.

6) Quality — Neither Skype nor Microsoft has a high quality video communication and collaboration solution.  So what changes that will be good from the users perspective?

7) Feature Overlap — Many of Skype’s features overlap with Microsoft Lync, Kinect and other tools.  Do they merge, remain parallel, or  something in-between?

8) Reality — Press releases are great at talking about the opportunities.  The hard part is knitting together the gaps in technology, philosophy, marketing, pricing, packaging, distribution, support…

 

Will they be successful ?  Only time will tell.  What do you think?