Microsoft has completed the $8.5 billion acquisition of consumer VoIP and instant messaging service provider Skype from investment firm Silver Lake that was first announced
six months ago.
Now, Skype is officially a new business division inside of Microsoft, and the company's CEO Tony Bates will become president of that division, reporting directly to Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer. For now, it appears Skype's products won't change.
However, Microsoft is clearly eager to integrate Skype into many of its other products, and the company has been clear that acquiring Skype was just the beginning.
Naturally, the obvious first place to expect Skype integration is in Lync Communication Server, Microsoft's unified communications platform for enterprise. Previously, if companies wanted to integrate Skype into their Lync/Office Communicator Server, they had to purchase a Skype gateway to allow SIP trunking.
Instant messaging and IP telephony are only a small part of the picture of Microsoft's acquisition of Skype and its integration with Lync. The main thing now is video. Since early this year, Microsoft has shown its efforts at bringing video chat to everything from Xboxes with Kinect to Office 365 to the iPhone via Bing mobile web app, and today's announcement of the Skype acquisition included an infographic showing all kinds of video calling stats.
