Microsoft points at Skype, Lync: You two, in my office – right now

Microsoft has confirmed it will this month roll out Skype for Business across its subscription-based Office 365 cloud.

In doing so, Redmond has shoved a spike through the heart of Lync, which Skype for biz replaces.

"Skype for Business Online is now rolling out to Office 365 customers worldwide, and we expect the roll out to be complete by the end of May," said the Skype team in a blog post.

"If you currently use Lync Online in Office 365, the new Skype for Business user experience will appear for you in the coming weeks. For customers that need a little more time to prepare for Skype for Business, we have provided the ability for administrators to switch between Skype for Business and the traditional Lync user interface."

Microsoft announced the change back in November, and has spent the intervening months carefully re-skinning Lync's voice and video calls, instant messaging, and videoconferencing, to look just like Skype to ease the transition for users. No features will be dropped during the shift from Lync to Skype, we're told.

Skype for Business will be rooted in the Office 365 cloud, as Microsoft promised. There have been some tweaks along the way to bring this about: OneNote integration has been improved so that the note-taking app can be used in group chats, and sharing files over Skype is easier now, Redmond claims.

The menu system has been beefed up, both in the amount of information and the speed with which it is displayed.

It's a sad end for Lync, which only lasted four years after being rebranded from Office Communicator 2007. The writing was on the wall for the software ever since Microsoft's purchase of Skype, but Lync had a lot of dedicated fans, some of them Reg readers. ®

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