Will Skype Be Another Microsoft License Gotcha?

23.05.2011
After earlier this month for $8.5 billion, most of the questions revolved around how Skype's IM, voice and video calling features will fit into Microsoft enterprise products such as Outlook and Lync.

But an equally important question is: How will Skype fit into your enterprise license? And will you end up paying for it even as you don't use it?

"It's just one more nugget that Microsoft will bundle into an overall enterprise agreement," says Jeff Muscarella, and executive of IT at , a consulting firm that advises enterprise IT buyers.

Muscarella compares Skype to Microsoft's 2006 acquisition of Softricity. This paved the way for App-V, an application virtualization technology that is rolled into MDOP (Microsoft Desktop Optimization Pack), Microsoft's suite of on-premise PC management tools for customers with an enterprise agreement.

"You have to have an EA to use MDOP," says Muscarella. "But most of our customers don't use MDOP and they don't want it. But they are paying for it. And they have to wrangle with Microsoft to unbundle it."

Like most big tech vendors, Microsoft is making an aggressive push into the mobile and unified communications spaces, with Windows Phone 7 and Lync, respectively. The Skype acquisition is a great way to round out the UC features within Office, says Muscarella, but he adds that many big companies already have UC products in place, whether it be through Cisco WebEx or Microsoft Lync.