
People mostly used Skype to stay in touch with long-distance families and friends. Skype pioneered remote video communication in 2003, long before remote work came to the forefront. Looking for a Microsoft Teams or Skype alternative? Try Pumble.Microsoft Teams vs Skype integrations 1:0.Microsoft Teams vs Skype cloud storage 1:1.Microsoft Teams vs Skype settings and reactions 1:1.Microsoft Teams vs Skype communication 1:0.Microsoft Teams vs Skype meeting length 0:1.Microsoft Teams vs Skype max participant capacity 1:0.

#WHEN DID SKYPE COME OUT WINDOWS#
And, come on, a new Skype app for Windows XP and Linux both? That's just crazy. Big businesses want a piece of that.īut in the short term, it means a better Skype that can get a lot smarter. It's also a great showcase for why the Microsoft Azure cloud is attractive to outside parties: It's helping Skype build bigger applications that can serve more people more reliably, faster than they ever could before. Strategically speaking, that kind of intelligence is crucial as Microsoft positions Skype to take on the imminent threat represented by new-era collaboration tools like Slack. Raghav says that with this move, they're poised to get closer to the Microsoft fold and take advantage of "these strengths and assets that we have not been able to use." Over the last few years, too, Skype has been the beneficiary of Microsoft Research's coolest sci-fi advances including Skype Translate for real-time translation and, more recently, chatbots. To that end, Raghav says that Microsoft has or will release new and updated apps for Windows 10, Windows XP and Windows 7, right alongside the iPhone, Google Chromebooks, Android, and Linux. With Skype's global footprint, says Raghav, it's important that it's served out of data centers that are closest to users - which might sometimes mean borrowing some capacity from a Bing data center here and there.īy standardizing on the cloud model, Microsoft has a consistent way to deliver new apps, too, without worrying so much about squeezing them in to the old architecture. Of note is that this doesn't mean that Skype is moving 100% to the Microsoft Azure cloud, the company's fast-growing cloud computing platform. " should expect improvements in all those areas." "It's not just about new features," says Raghav. By plugging into Microsoft's cloud, already optimized for running internet apps at large scales, all things are possible. It means higher performance, more freedom for Microsoft to add new features, and less latency when it comes to things like getting notifications or sending files. It's also way more exciting than it sounds. "It's not refueling a jet in midair, it's actually changing a jet engine in midair," says Microsoft Corporate VP of Skype. The move is already underway, and while you may have seen some hiccups with Skype in the last few weeks, the dividends will be worth it as Skype gets much better in every way. On Wednesday the company announced a big shift for Skype, as it moves from a peer-to-peer architecture to a brand new, shiny cloud-based backend. That has hamstrung the service, particularly when it comes to adding new features.

Performance increased, and Microsoft had more ability to manage and scale up the service.īut Skype's underlying architecture, the way it was designed, hasn't changed much, even as it grew to 300 million monthly active users. Then in 2012, a year after Microsoft bought Skype for $8.5 billion, it switched over to "supernodes," meaning that users connected to a dedicated server rather than to each other. The name "Skype" comes from "Sky peer-to-peer," a reference to the fact that it created direct connections between computers on the internet to make its then-cutting-edge voice and video calls possible. When Skype first launched in 2003, it wasn't just cool - it was a revolution. Account icon An icon in the shape of a person's head and shoulders.
