Microsoft acquires Qld partner's Skype technology

Microsoft has acquired unified communications technology from Queensland-based Event Zero for an undisclosed sum, with plans to bolster Skype for Business Online. 

Zig Serafin, corporate vice president for Microsoft's Skype for Business team, announced the acquisition of "the technology assets underlying the UC Commander product suite from Event Zero, a leading provider of management software for Skype for Business Online".

"This acquisition will allow us to expand and improve the built-in management tools for Skype for Business, and is the latest example of Microsoft’s commitment to deliver a complete, enterprise-grade communications solution at global scale with Office 365. Event Zero will continue to service its customers and partners," he wrote in a blog post. 

Event Zero is based in Underwood, between Brisbane and the Gold Coast, and was founded in 2005 by chief executive David Tucker, Matt Crump and Jerome Witmann.

It is not the first such deal for Tucker, who sold his previous security software company XtreamLok to Symantec in 2005, and before that sold movie website iMovie to Village Roadshow in 2000.

On the Microsoft deal, Tucker said: “Microsoft was a logical partner for the technology. I see the purchase benefiting more Skype for Business customers than Event Zero could possibly reach."

Event Zero began life with a tool for managing orchestration issues in high-volume transactional systems, and also developed a green IT solution for the Queensland government CIO's office, called Greentrac, as well as further tools based on this technology.

"As our customers deployed Greentrac and really started using the solution, many of them started asking for new features, new reporting and new information. We realised that the trend from our customers was not just to be green, but also to improve their understanding of the makeup and use of their PC fleets. These questions became so frequent that we started work on a completely new product called Enterprise Commander," according to an Event Zero blog.

UC Commander is based on Enterprise Commander. Its feature set comes under the Dossier brand, which Microsoft added to the Skype for Business enterprise marketplace of IT pro tools last May.

Justin Morris, Australian country manager of Skype for Business partner Modality Systems, told CRN the acquisition would "be great for customers worldwide".

Modality Systems has been using Dossier for around four years and now incorporates the tool into most solutions it deploys for customers to give them visibility of their environment and usage.

"Out of the box, usage data exists in in Skype for Business, but sometimes it is difficult to surface in a way that is useful for the business.

"It will be great for customer worldwide really. Rather than Microsoft building it themselves, there was already a great product on the market, so bringing that together with what it was built to serve will be great for customers worldwide," said Morris.

Powerful diagnostics

Microsoft's Serafin said the acquisition aimed to "make the Skype for Business management tools as powerful and easy-to-use for IT professionals as Skype is for end users". 

He explained how users of Microsoft's calling and conferencing services can use the Office 365 administration centre to acquire and assign phone numbers to their users "in minutes", as well as view reports of audio and video conferencing usage, and "quickly access aggregated call quality information using our Call Quality Dashboard".

"In the future, using the technology acquired today, we will be able to add strong diagnostics and troubleshooting capabilities with even more extensive reporting and analytics for online audio, video conferencing and media streams – all within a unified management and admin system," said Serafin.