Skype for Business: Release Date in April!

Office Blogs has just posted a new blog post: Get ready for Skype for Business. It’s written by Giovanni Mezgec, general manager for the Skype for Business team.

The whole blog post is worth a read, and you can now get your hands on a technical preview of the Skype for Business client, but one line stood out for me:

“…the new client, server and online service will become generally available starting in April!”

This was a surprise! We’d known previously that Skype for Business was going to be released in the first half of 2015. I had previously assumed that the release was going to happen at MS Ignite. But… MS Ignite isn’t until May.

Of course, the wording is typically unclear – available “starting in April”. So, maybe released to Office 365 at the end of April in time for an early May release at MS Ignite? But what if it isn’t going to be released at MS Ignite – what if it happens before that?

If not Ignite, then when?

I had a look at other Microsoft events happening in April. There is one big event, happening April 29-May 1: Build 2015. Could Skype for Business be released at Build?

At first, I thought no – because it’s the wrong audience. But, the more I thought about it, it could make sense. We already know that Build 2015 is going to have loads of Windows 10 stuff…and we know that Skype is going to be integrated directly into Windows 10. We also know that Skype for Business is going to have more integration with Skype Consumer, so is this a marketing play to drive that integration deeper.

If Skype for Business is now managed by the Skype product team, and not the Office product team – maybe it does make sense to release Skype for Business at Build? These are just my thoughts though: so feel free to sound off in the comments!