‘Skype for Business‘ is here. After Microsoft’s acquisition of Skype 4 years ago this month they have been (slowly) integrating it with their own live communications offering Lync (previously ‘Live Communications Server’) as well as with their Outlook online mail client and with the upcoming Windows 10 (watch those EU legal hawks circle around this one, much like IE integration with Windows this may be deemed to be abusing a monopoly too against the likes of Google Hangouts etc.)
I only noticed it while downloading some ISOs via my technet subscription, so bye bye Lync and hello Skype.
The end user client will look more like Skype as it will take on some of the blue branding elements. Although administrators on either on-premise or Office 365 can change the skin to match the previous Lync client thereby reducing end user chaos during any transition.
Here’s the l(y)nc for more info:
https://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/dn913785.aspx
I’ll probably run a lab migration and a blog post will hopefully follow.