Microsoft will integrate Skype's calling features into many of its key products, including Office, the Xbox and its Windows Phone software, but it will it will also continue to offer Skype for competing platforms, CEO Steve Ballmer said Tuesday.
Microsoft has agreed to buy Skype for $US 8.5 billion, the companies announced Tuesday.
The people who paid US$2.5 billion for Skype two years ago are starting to look very astute.
A week or two ago that wasn't the case. Skype's IPO had been delayed. Google and Facebook were sniffing around Skype, but a buyout didn't seem likely — too many samolies for Facebook to muster, and all sorts of potential problems for Google, including an antitrust hurdle of Brobdingnagian proportions.
But now comes the announcement that Microsoft will purchase Skype for US$8.5 billion. As a defensive move, Microsoft buying Skype has some merit: a Google Voice-and-Skype combination would prove a formidable challenge to Windows Live Messenger and Lync, both in the consumer market and in the enterprise. The Skype international telephone number inventory — and Skype's long experience with local telcos all over the world — would provide an instant presence that Google Voice is still struggling to establish.
It's hard to envision what Microsoft intends to do with Skype for corporate IT. Skype is widely regarded by network admins as anathema. Five years ago, at the BlackHat conference in Europe, Philippe Biodi and Fabrice Desclaux described Skype's obfuscated code, saying it "looks like /dev/random" and it hasn't gotten any better. Like any P2P program, Skype basically runs a backdoor, with random pings and relays going out even when there's nobody using the phone. Security people love software like that.
So if the software's no good in the corporate environment, what can enterprise IT expect to get out of Microsoft's $8.5 billion investment?
Not much, as far as I can tell. Speculation that Skype will integrate into the Lync or Exchange environment seem completely far-fetched: The architectures are completely different, and the software isn't reusable. Surely, Microsoft isn't expecting to keep many key Skype developers around, even with fat paychecks. Those international phone numbers and telco connections could help extend Lync, at least in theory. Skype has a good-sized user base, with 120 million active users every month, but that's small potatoes compared to Live Messenger.
Some analysts speculate that Microsoft will meld the Kinect (currently Xbox-only, but coming soon to a Windows 8 near you) with Skype, but that doesn't make a very compelling argument. Offering a $100 Kinect as a replacement for a $2.95 webcam makes about as much sense as ... as ... as buying Skype for $8.5 billion, eh?
The only positive note for IT, as best I can tell, is possible integration of P2P VoIP technology with Windows Phone. Microsoft may be playing a long game, with a Skype client for Windows Phone 8. Presumably the client wouldn't send chills down the spine of Exchange and Lync admins. Having Skype available for free corporate calls worldwide certainly has a nice ring to it.
But $8.5 billion?
As it promised last week, Skype today began serving up an update to Mac users of its chat and Internet phone software, fixing a dangerous bug that a researcher said could be used to build a worm.
Microsoft is close to finalising a deal to buy internet phone company Skype Technologies for over US$7 billion, and a deal could be announced by Tuesday, according to a news report.
Buying Skype would give Microsoft a recognized brand name on the Internet at a time when it is struggling to get more traction in the consumer market, The Wall Street Journal said in a report late on Monday US time.
Microsoft and Skype could not be immediately reached for comment. Both companies declined to comment to the WSJ.
Facebook, Cisco, and Google were also considering partnering or acquiring Skype, according to earlier news reports.
Despite being a well-recognized Internet brand among online users, Skype ran a loss last year. The company, which was founded in 2003, posted last year revenue of US$860 million and $264 million in operating profits, but still lost $7 million, according to WSJ. The company had $686 million in long-term debt as of Dec. 31.
Skype announced in August that it had filed with the Securities and Exchange Commission for a proposed initial public offering (IPO) of its ordinary shares. It put its IPO plans on hold after appointing in October a new chief executive, Tony Bates, who was earlier a senior vice president at Cisco.
The company is currently owned by an investor group led by Silver Lake, and which includes among others eBay Inc, and Skype founders Niklas Zennstrom and Janus Friis, it said on its website.
Your office is now optional. A recent study from Infonetics Research projects that enterprises will spend $5 billion on videoconferencing and telepresence by 2015. To accommodate the need for instant connectivity and information sharing at the office, CIOs need to coordinate IT investments with physical space. Vendors like Polycom and Steelcase are teaming up to integrate audio, video and file sharing using multiple ports and display screens at office meeting tables.
Facebook's innovative new <a href="http://www.networkworld.com/topics/data-center.html">data center</a> design -- believed to be one of the world's most energy-efficient facilities of its kind -- will have a significant influence on corporate data center build-outs over the next several years, experts say.
Less than a week after confirming that a flaw in <a href="http://www.networkworld.com/news/2011/041811-skype-for-android-leaks-user.html?hpg1=bn">Skype for Android</a> could leak sensitive user information, the Internet calling company Wednesday issued an urgent update to fix the problem.
Skype videoconferencing will soon be supported in the LifeSize Passport business-class videoconferencing system, LifeSize announced Tuesday.
Verizon's just-released "2011 Data Breach Investigations Report" says businesses could prevent most data breaches if they stick to security principles that are cheap and easy to implement.
As smartphones have grown more powerful and complex, so have the threats against them.
A flaw in Skype for Android could let criminals harvest private information from smartphones, including the user's name and email address, contacts and chat logs, the Internet calling software maker confirmed Friday.
Iran's apparent theft of valid SSL certificates may be an attempt to trap Iranians who use the Internet to duck the government's restrictions, a <a href="http://www.networkworld.com/topics/security.html">security</a> expert says.
Iran may have been involved in an attack that resulted in hackers' acquiring bogus digital certificates for some of the Web's biggest sites, including Google and Gmail, Microsoft, Skype and Yahoo, a certificate issuing firm said today.
Brough Turner is building a network that can circumvent both incumbent carriers and the FCC.