Skype for Business will be available in the first half of 2015, and brings together the familiar experience and user love of Skype with the enterprise security, compliance and control of Lync.
In the business world, people use various methods every day to communicate and collaborate to get their jobs done. From audio conferencing, to telephony, to instant messaging, this has created a complex web of technologies that people have needed to navigate to connect with each other.
For the past 10 years, Microsoft has invested in the transformation of business, disrupting the status quo with Lync, by simplifying and unifying all of the different tools people use to communicate for work. We made Lync a core part of Office to make it easy for people to connect with others to get work done. Lync means the freedom to work anywhere. It’s like tapping someone on the shoulder to say “let’s chat” no matter where you are in the world. Colleagues meet together and make decisions in an instant and IT Professionals rest easy knowing their end-users are supported by a secure platform that they manage and control.
Today, thousands of organizations, large and small, count on Lync for voice, video and conferencing.
At the same time, a decade ago, Skype broke down the distance barrier by bringing people together from all over the world. It forever changed the way people shared their lives by getting friends and family together to celebrate special moments and create extraordinary bonds.
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Today, Skype is so much more. It’s used by more than 300 million people for messaging, calling and sharing. It lets people and groups connect in more spontaneous ways across multiple platforms to have fun and get things done. From desktop, to mobile to TV, it’s for communicating throughout the day, every day. Skype is a universal symbol of togetherness.
In the first half of 2015, the next version of Lync will become Skype for Business with a new client experience, new server release, and updates to the service in Office 365. With the best of Lync, and the best of Skype, we believe that Skype for Business will again transform the way people communicate by giving organizations reach to hundreds of millions of Skype users outside the walls of their business.