What's different is that those clients will take on the Skype look and feel, with Microsoft aligning the user experience across its consumer and business offerings to the one that most people are familiar with. The product will be rebranded to Skype for Business-shades of OneDrive for Business-but don't let the name fool you: The coming Lync versions are indeed updates to Lync, offering all the functionality you've come to expect.

There will be new versions of the client-or, I should say clients, since there are desktop and mobile clients now-the server and Lync Online.

Lync Online, which is part of Office 365, was originally on a quarterly update schedule, but with Microsoft moving to a more rapid release schedule, that's been sped up too. And of course a slew of mobile apps and updates on that front as well. This included Skype IM and presence features in Lync by mid-2013 and then video chat integration by mid-2014.

I wrote about this change in 2013 Promises To Be a Big Year for Lync, but the basic gist is that Microsoft had established a timeline for moving the products closer together. This transformation was essentially telegraphed way back in February 2013, when Microsoft revealed that it had moved Lync into the Skype organization, not Office.

But when the next version hits in early 2015, it will be rebranded as Skype for Business, and will include new client and server experiences and of course an update to Office 365. This should come as no surprise to anyone who's been paying attention to Microsoft's evolution of Lync over the past two years.

Sign in to skype for business update#