Microsoft's Lync communications server is to be rebranded. The next version, due to be released next year, will be named instead Skype for Business. It will retain Lync's infrastructure—the ability to use on-premises servers, optional federation with external communications networks, and so on and so forth—but the branding and client design will closely match those of Microsoft's consumer communication platform.

The Skype and Lync development teams have been working together since shortly after Microsoft bought the popular Skype platform for $8.5 billion in 2011.

Skype for Business will further improve interoperability with regular Skype. While voice and instant messaging are already interoperable between Lync and Skype, the next version will add video messaging and access to the Skype user directory. This will mean that, should administrators choose to enable it, the Skype for Business client software will serve as a fairly fully featured Skype client, too.

While leveraging the stronger Skype branding is in some ways unsurprising—Skype has far more name recognition than Lync—we imagine there will be some inevitable confusion between Skype and Skype for Business, just as there already is between OneDrive and the (completely unrelated) OneDrive for Business.