Microsoft had promised back in February that it would deliver integration between Microsoft Lync and Skype in June… But I guess they just couldn’t wait any longer.  See this PC World item about the integration, that is live today.

This is a big deal.  Many of our customers, who have fallen in love with Microsoft Lync (especially as part of Microsoft Office 365), have been asking how they can extend VoIP calling and instant messaging to their business partners without buying Office 365 licenses for them.  This is the perfect answer.  Now these customers can use Microsoft Lync to place a call to a Skype user, or to send an instant message.

As organizations tap into the benefits of collaboration among employees, using services like Microsoft Lync to deliver instant messaging and click-to-call voice or video, it only makes sense that these organizations would want to extend that collaboration to their business partners.  A foundation might want to touch base with its grantees, for instance.  Up until now, extending collaboration in this way was costly and complicated.  Organizations had to set up employees of their business partners as pseudo-employees, which is expensive and presents security risks.  Or they had to establish separate services to be used just for communicating with business partners–too much complexity!

But now, organizations can use Microsoft Lync–which many organizations already use–and Skype, which is widely adopted.  This is a great announcement.