

This post, alongside with the great Wikipedia pages dedicated to Skype and Skype for Business, is meant to shed some light on the matter. From a marketing point of view, we could indeed say that Skype for Business is meant to be the corporate version of Skype, encompassing all the main features that have made its counterpart famous since the early 2000s and also adding many other business-level tools to the shed (see below) the similarities between these two pieces of software, however, do not go much further than the brand: as a matter of fact, the two products have been designed and developed in completely different times and ways, meaning that - although being interoperable - they cannot be exchanged with each other. What does such application have to do with Skype, the award-winning messaging and VOIP system acquired by Microsoft in May 2011? The answer is not as simple as one could imagine.

Skype for Business has been developed and designed specifically for business needs and to help the development of smart working initiatives in small and large companies.
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It's the IM and conference framework that Microsoft developed to replace the well-known (and outdated) Windows Messenger, which was previously used in conjunction with Microsoft Exchange Server as instant messaging software.

Skype for Busines, formerly known as Microsoft Lync and Microsoft Office Communicator before that, is an instant messaging client used with Microsoft Lync Server or Lync Online available in the Microsoft Office 365 cloud suite.
