What is Skype for Business?

- Skype for Business is Microsoft's new client for unified communication. And with Skype for Business you have the ability to converse in three different modes, you can hold conversations that are chat conversations, with instant messaging. You can have audio conversations and you can have video conversations. And in each of these modalities you can also hold meetings, and you can also easily share files with other users. Skype for Business is a great collaboration platform it's office aware so it's connected to Microsoft Outlook it's easy to be able to schedule meetings with people that you collaborate with already, but it also supports collaboration in Microsoft Word, PowerPoint, and other applications, so if you're working on a document, co-authoring for example in Word, you have the ability to go directly into a Skype meeting from there.

Skype provides a great way to communicate with large numbers of people, the consumer version of Skype taps out at 25 users, that meeting which we had before that was 10 or 15, Skype for Business allows you to have a single meeting with up to 250 people at one time. So even if those folks don't have access to Skype for Business they can still join the meeting. Imagine now, ways that you can communicate, not just internally but with vendors, with partners and with customers using Skype for Business.

Skype for Business is also mobile, you'll be seeing Skype on the desktop in this course but I'll also show you the client to use Skype for Business in iOS and there's one for Android that client will be Lync but it will work and looks like Skype for Business. And then finally, all of the communications that you're going to create in Skype for Business are secure, whether you're transferring files, taking meeting notes or simply having a conversation, you'll know that you're secure if you're working inside the Skype for Business environment.

This is what we can do with Skype for Business, let's log in and start using it.