For big companies Microsoft owns email, and is in the process of owning voicemail, since it's part of Exchange now. They want to run your phone system too, but

For big companies Microsoft owns email, and is in the process of owning voicemail, since it's part of Exchange now. They want to run your phone system too, but Cisco is the leader in that space at the Enterprise, and a bunch of telco/cable companies in the SMB space. So how is Microsoft competing? In the enterprise, they embed the phone (Lync) technology pervasively and throughout their platform. So, without doing anything, I can click to call from SharePoint, email or SMS from an Office app, videochat from PowerPoint. They're exposing the communications mechanisms everywhere. IMO, this Skype thing is intended to do the same thing, but on the consumer and SMB side. Unified communications for the millions of people using Hotmail/Live and Skype -- and for the millions of business people who DO NOT have UC today. Skype gives them consumers in Europe and small business everywhere. One of the holes in Office 365 is a voice offering for smaller companies -- the pricepoint for the full Exchange/Lync suite is really high unless you have 10,000+ seats. So you can give small companies with little money access to unified communications, buy accessories like handsets and speakerphones from the same partner (Polycom) and eventually graduate into the enterprise offerings.