Skype for Business will offer phone numbers to Office 365 users, available in preview this summer
and this is only the beginning Natalie Gagliordi / ZDNet : Microsoft taps Polycom for Roundtable tool on Skype for Business Chris Crum / WebProNews : What To Expect From Skype For Business Simon Sharwood / The Register : Skype squares up to Cisco again with new round of ‘Room Systems’ Kurt Mackie / Redmond : Microsoft To Roll Out Skype for Business Products in April Microsoft : Polycom and Microsoft expand relationship through new series of video collaboration solutions for Skype for Business Kip Kniskern / WinBeta : Skype for Business announces Skype Room Systems, relationship with Polycom, more Julie Bort / Business Insider : Microsoft's new videoconferencing app will fend off Google while taking on Cisco The Fire Hose : Skype for Business is getting down to business with more additions on the way Napier Lopez / The Next Web : Skype for Business adds integrated landline calling for Office 365 subscribers
Context & Ripple Effects
This announcement lands just ahead of the public rollout of Skype for Business in April, which rebrands Lync inside Office 365 and sets up the suite as Microsoft's enterprise communications front end. Offering phone numbers through the same subscription is the step that turns the suite from a messaging and meeting tool into a replacement for desk phones.
The move also extends the hardware flank of the same push: alongside the number service, Microsoft is expanding its Polycom relationship on Skype Room Systems, squaring off directly against Cisco's meeting-room business. Calling, rooms, and conferencing are being bundled into one Office 365 line item.
First-order effects
- Office 365 enterprise customers gain the option to provision phone numbers within their existing Microsoft subscription, letting them retire standalone PBX and landline contracts at renewal time.
- Cisco's room-systems franchise now faces a Microsoft-plus-Polycom bundle priced into seats Microsoft already owns, pressuring Cisco to compete on hardware value rather than ecosystem lock-in.
Second-order effects
- Telephony becomes an attach-rate play: every Office 365 seat converted to calling raises revenue per user without a new sales motion, which is why Microsoft followed with general availability of meeting, conferencing, and calling features for enterprise users by November 2015.
- Rivals outside the PBX world respond at the collaboration layer instead — by 2017 Amazon's Chime and Google's Hangouts are pushing into the same meetings-and-calling space as Microsoft adds automated call routing and analytics, fragmenting who owns enterprise voice.
Third-order effects
- If calling keeps collapsing into productivity subscriptions, the standalone unified-communications vendor category erodes: voice stops being a product IT buys and becomes a checkbox in a suite negotiation between Microsoft, Cisco, Google, and Amazon.
- The pattern also seeds internal succession — with telephony absorbed into Office 365, Microsoft's own next battleground shifts to team collaboration, foreshadowed by the long-running Skype Teams effort aimed at bundling with Office 365 for business.
The trend: Enterprise telephony is being absorbed into productivity-suite subscriptions, where the winner is decided by seat bundles and room systems rather than phone hardware.