Microsoft’s marriage to Skype dissected

Integration

Microsoft recently released its Office 365 beta, which has so far been warmly received by customers and analysts. With the acquisition of Skype it will now be able to integrate audio and video calling into Office 365, Outlook and web mail products.

While Google has been spruiking its video capabilities, such as via Gmail, for some time it failed to gain much momentum largely because of the loyalty of Skype users.

Once the deal is settled Microsoft will have a presence of tens of millions of smart phones equipped with Skype Mobile, supporting reliable video and audio calling, even at 3G speeds. Microsoft is also expected to integrate its Bing search engine into Skype on phones, laptops and PCs. 

In addition, the marriage between Microsoft and Skype will also give rise to lucrative possibilities on the advertising side, a key part of which would be social networking sites like Facebook, of which Microsoft owns 1.6 percent.

Nadeem Ahmad, global technology director for Dimension Data said from a consumer perspective, Microsoft’s Skype buy makers perfect sense, but the enterprise implications are not immediately clear. “They know everyone in the consumer world is using Skype,” he said. “They’re seeing an opportunity to corner that market on the conferencing side.”

Ahmad said the Skype acquisition works with Microsoft’s bid to dominate in both the home and the office and Skype also plays into its mobility story, where it can be used as a de facto voice/conferencing service for tablets. 

Sean Connolly, general manager and vice president of network integration at Dimension Data, says the acquisition gives Microsoft the ability to strike on the merging of consumer and business IT. “It enables Microsoft to seize that opportunity,” Connolly said.

But not everyone is happy about the deal. 

Skype has typically operated as an open platform solution and many have warned that Microsoft may imbue it with proprietary features and make it harder, for instance for users running Apple or Google’s operating systems.

When Bob Venero, the CEO of Future Tech, a Holbrook, New York solution provider that recommends Skype to international customers, learned Tuesday that Microsoft was buying the Internet video communications provider in an $8.5 billion blockbuster cash deal, his heart sank. 

"I was concerned when I heard about the deal," said Venero. "Generally when Microsoft gets their hands on something it becomes more convoluted. The biggest danger for Microsoft is letting this get caught in the Microsoft bureaucracy. 

"The worst thing they could do is mess with Skype," said Venero, who also uses the Skype Internet communications video service for international business. "Microsoft needs to think about growing and expanding Skype -- not constricting it."

That means not fine tuning Skype to work only with Microsoft products, Venero explained. "Skype works on the Apple iPad and iPhone and it has for quite some time," he said "Are they going to continue down that open path or are they going to make it a Microsoft only product?"

This article originally appeared at crn.com