Today Microsoft has announced the new name for Lync: Skype for Business!
http://blogs.office.com/2014/11/11/introducing-skype-business/
Obviously, we were already expecting a new version of Lync for next year – now we’ve got some more information on it.
Lync was already part of Microsoft’s “Skype” devision, so a name change to “Skype for Business” seems logical this way.
However, the “Lync” brand was already known by many organisations as a professional software or service – Skype still feels as a “consumer” product and less professional.
This while (at least as far as we know by now) the architecture remains (more or less) the same – in the same article, it is stated that no new infrastructure is required as it can run on the same server specs. So I suspect the same deployment options – on premises or hosted, and in that last case either by Microsoft, public/shared or dedicated tenants.
For (enterprise) voice (enhanced) features, security, quality assurance, manageability and connectivity, for the near future we’ll still need on premises or dedicated tenants I think – however this name change also allows a more integrated approach for the future.
As also, some features already announced, will join this release – Skype (consumer version) video integration, and probably the video gateway / conferencing systems integration as anounced earlier this year at Lync Conference.
Who knows, the next-next version will be “cloud” only and therefore the name change at this stage might be a smart move in that direction?