For quite some time now, Microsoft Lync has grown as a unified communications and collaboration platform for the enterprise, and certain video conferencing and collaboration companies have put together major strategy for Lync interoperability, as well as creating a path for their partners to expand on their collaboration-focused capabilities..

The intro article of this series, The New Future of Collaboration — Skype for Business addresses how Microsoft has disrupted the markets with Lync by unifying the different tools people used to communicate for work. As a core part of Office 365, Lync has provided major cloud strategy in terms of collaboration for the enterprise (along with other applications for storage and file share). It has been reported by Microsoft that in the first half of 2015, the next version of Lync will become Skype for Business with a new server release and updates to the service in Office 365. Microsoft believes that Skype for Business will once again transform the way people communicate.

This first interview article’s participant is Robb Woods, head of sales engineering at Blue Jeans Network.