Do not get me wrong; Microsoft did not kill the Lync product. It just rebranded it to “Skype for Business”.

Microsoft acquired Skype in 2011. Back then, it was very vague what the long-term strategy was behind having two separate products that could both do almost the same thing. When it came time to consolidate the brands, Skype’s large consumer footprint and instant familiarity made it the easy choice over Lync and a couple of days ago, Microsoft announced it:
Effective in 2015, Lync will become Skype for Business.

Skype for Business will retain Lync’s infrastructure—the ability to use on-premises servers, optional federation with external communications networks, and so on and so forth—but the branding and client design will closely match those of Microsoft’s consumer communication platform.

Skype for Business will further improve interoperability with the consumer version of Skype. While voice and instant messaging are already interoperable between Lync and Skype (watch this video to see the interoperability in action), the next version will add video messaging and access to the Skype user directory. This will mean that, should administrators choose to enable it; the Skype for Business client software will serve as a fairly fully featured Skype client (for consumer), too.

Read the full announcement here …