Office 365 enterprise users get Skype for Business meeting, conferencing, and calling features
Microsoft today released new Skype for Business voice and meetings capabilities in Office 365. The new features include Skype Meeting Broadcast, PSTN Conferencing, and Cloud PBX with PSTN Calling.
Context & Ripple Effects
Microsoft has spent 2015 assembling this launch piece by piece: it promised phone numbers for Office 365 users back in March, then took Skype for Business into general availability in April, and last month wired Skype voice and video directly into Office Online. Today's release closes the loop by shipping the actual telephony layer — Skype Meeting Broadcast, PSTN Conferencing, and Cloud PBX with PSTN Calling — inside the suite enterprises already pay for.
First-order effects
- Office 365 tenants can now buy phone numbers and place and receive PSTN calls from within Skype for Business, turning the suite into a replacement for desk phones and conference bridges rather than just chat and meetings.
Second-order effects
- Legacy PBX and audio-conferencing vendors lose their pricing cover when a customer's incumbent productivity vendor bundles dial tone into an existing per-seat subscription, forcing them to compete on features instead of the contract they sit inside.
Third-order effects
- The pattern holds through the later record: by 2017 Microsoft was adding automated call routing and analytics while Amazon and Google pushed in with Chime and the new Hangouts (the competitive response), pointing toward enterprise voice consolidating into cloud productivity platforms and away from standalone telephony systems.
The trend: Enterprise communications is being absorbed into cloud productivity suites, with the platform that owns email and calendars also becoming the one that owns the phone system.