Microsoft adds automated call routing and analytics features to Skype for Business, as Amazon and Google push into the space with Chime and the new Hangouts
Microsoft is adding new features to its high-end Skype for Business service, just as Amazon and Google are trying to get into the enterprise cloud-conferencing game.
Context & Ripple Effects
Microsoft has spent two years wiring Skype for Business into Office 365: first offering phone numbers to Office 365 users, then rolling out meeting, conferencing, and calling features across the enterprise tier in late 2015. Automated call routing and analytics are the next layer — moving the product from a dial tone toward a managed telephony platform.
The timing is not accidental. Amazon launched Chime a month earlier with three business pricing tiers, and Google is pushing the new Hangouts at the same customers — both attacking the space Microsoft has been quietly annexing through its Office 365 bundle.
First-order effects
- Office 365 enterprise admins get automated call routing and analytics inside Skype for Business, making the high-end tier more defensible against standalone conferencing tools that lack integration with Microsoft's directory and mail data.
- Amazon and Google now face an incumbent that can ship telephony features as part of a suite customers already pay for, rather than selling conferencing as a separate line item like Chime's three-tier pricing.
Second-order effects
- Pricing pressure shifts to the bundle: Amazon must justify per-seat Chime fees against features Microsoft gives away inside Office 365, pushing both toward richer tiers or deeper discounts for suite-attached customers.
- Analytics-driven routing raises the value of owning the underlying identity and directory layer — a structural advantage for Microsoft that competitors without an equivalent enterprise graph have to buy or build around.
Third-order effects
- If the pattern holds, enterprise voice and video stop being products and become features of cloud suites — a trajectory Microsoft later formalized by launching Azure Communication Services, exposing calling and chat as developer APIs and challenging Twilio.
- The endgame is consolidation of business communications around whoever controls the productivity platform, leaving standalone conferencing vendors to compete on price or specialize.
The trend: Enterprise communications are being absorbed into cloud productivity suites, with Microsoft, Amazon, and Google competing on bundles and platform integration rather than standalone conferencing apps.