For most businesses, the pandemic has been a huge disruption – but some have benefited. Delivery services, online supermarkets and streaming sites have all boomed. Perhaps none has seen such a meteoric rise as Zoom.

Zoom’s growth isn’t simply a case of offering the right service at the right time. There were plenty of online meeting platforms to choose from, including 8x8, Cisco Webex and Microsoft Teams, but Zoom was the one that broke out of the business realm to facilitate remote pub quizzes, online fitness classes and virtual family get-togethers.

A key reason is ease of use. Zoom made it supremely easy to invite non-subscribers into your meetings, and for those people to join. In the first half of 2020, as its name became synonymous with videoconferencing, it became an obvious default option for businesses seeking a reliable, familiar way for employees to communicate during lockdown.

Now, although pandemic restrictions are finally easing, many organisations intend to allow employees to keep working from home, at least part of the time. And for businesses that settled on Zoom – or some other service – at the start of the pandemic, that raises an important question. Is the service still the right solution for an era where video calls are not a stopgap solution but an integral, ongoing part of your working practices?

As Stefan Walther, CEO of communications solution provider 3CX points out, the downsides of Zoom are starting to become apparent. “A lot of people don’t need the extent of the feature set,” Walther told PC Pro. “It’s a great platform; it works very well, but it comes with a hefty price tag, per-user licences with a lot of add-ons, and a quite expensive dial-in feature.”

It’s time to explore your alternatives – and one you might not have considered is hosting your own videoconferencing service.

Free and easy

You don’t necessarily need to pay for fully functional conferencing software. Jitsi is a complete free-to-use open-source option that includes end-to-end encryption and integration with Google, Microsoft products and Slack. First appearing under the name SIP communicator in the early 2000s, it’s now run by communications specialist 8x8, which supports the ongoing development of Jitsi alongside its commercial hosted videoconferencing solution.

To get started with Jitsi, you just need something to run the back-end on. Server code for Debian/Ubuntu and Docker can be downloaded for free, along with a range of support packages on GitHub, plus Chrome extensions, iOS and Android apps. Jitsi rooms can be embedded in your own website, and there’s a hosted web front-end at meet.jit.si for anyone who doesn’t want to host it themselves.

If you’re wondering whether Jitsi is good enough for your company, be reassured that some big names rely on it – including Wikimedia, which hosts its own public portal. In choosing a video platform, the organisation said it found that, for meetings of 10-15 participants, Jitsi’s performance was “subjectively on par with Google Meet and Zoom”.

Indeed, the developer says the platform is suitable for hosting unlimited free meetings with up to 100 simultaneous participants – although if you need a bigger capacity, or advanced features such as closed captioning, moderation and analytics, it recommends you step up to the paid-for 8x8 Meet service.

While Jitsi can be appealing for certain scenarios, it’s not your only free option. Google Hangouts, Cisco Webex and others allow free meetings for limited numbers of participants or limited times; 3CX only starts charging for its hosted conferencing solution after the first year’s use.

Web conferencing for education

Another free, open-source option is BigBlueButton. It’s a popular choice in education settings: having emerged from the Technology Innovation Management program at Canada’s Carleton University, it’s now supported by more than three quarters of the worldwide market for learning management systems (LMSes).

BigBlueButton is straightforward to deploy. The server runs happily on 64-bit Ubuntu 18.04 inside a Docker container, and it uses no client software at all, relying instead on native browser features. This makes it ideal for home-teaching environments, but also for businesses seeking an easy way to ensure that employees can stay in touch, regardless of what device they’re using or where.

As you’d expect, some of BigBlueButton’s features have a distinctly educational flavour. It supports online whiteboards and allows hosts to pick a random user to answer questions. Like many videoconferencing platforms, it allows the participants to raise a digital hand to ask a question or offer a response, and the host can click to lower all raised hands at once.

However, BigBlueButton sports a range of business staples, such as document sharing and breakout rooms, along with screen sharing and integration with CMS software as well as LMS tools.

Reasons to run your own server

Installing and managing your own videoconferencing solution is more complex than opting for a ready-made alternative, but it has benefits. Businesses and educational establishments can more finely tune their spending and back-end management, as well as gain greater control over add-ons and the location of data.

With third-party services, this type of control varies considerably between the different providers. Zoom account owners and administrators can customise which data centre regions they use for hosting real-time meetings and webinar data, although the default is locked to the region in which your account was originally provisioned.

With 3CX there’s more flexibility. CEO Stefan Walther told us that, on his company’s platform, “you’re always 100% in charge of your location, your data and the people you invite”. There’s no need to install a dedicated app if you’re happy to host meetings in the browser, and British users’ data will stay within the UK while European user data resides within the EU.

Skype for Business is another service that supports a self-hosted back end; however, owner Microsoft is currently encouraging customers to ditch Skype and move onto Teams instead, which resides wholly on Microsoft’s own servers.

Another factor to consider is the breadth of services you require. Buy into 3CX’s integrated communications service and you’re getting more than just a videoconferencing solution: it’s a fully featured PBX with a lot of extras, including VoIP for regular phone calling, messaging and presence tools, with support for both software clients and physical phones. Skype for Business has a similarly wide-ranging feature set. Having all of this in one place can help productivity, as employees don’t need to mess about switching between multiple tools, but smaller businesses often won’t need to go beyond video, group chat and messaging.

Managing your own service – even if it’s not hosted on your own hardware but cloud services such as Azure or AWS – means that you’re free to switch providers when you choose, or even migrate to an alternative videoconferencing platform entirely. Should you instead choose to roll hosting and app provision into a single payment, you don’t have this flexibility: there might be a minimum lock-in, and even if you migrate because your current provider no longer meets your requirements, there may be residual bills to be paid.

Support and hosting

While features are an important consideration when choosing a conferencing platform, another critical issue is support. A communications server is a key piece of business infrastructure, and you’ll need the expertise to keep it running. In many instances – but by no means all – a charged-for service will often be easier to get up and running more quickly. Likewise, less tech-savvy end users may find it easier to work on the move if they can do so using apps, rather than a mobile browser.

Some services have quick setup wizards for easy deployment, but others expect a significant level of technical know-how on the part of administrators, which may make them an impractical choice for smaller organisations, at least as far as self-hosting is concerned. Even for the larger enterprise, an option that requires constant monitoring could justify adding one to the head count which, over the course of a year, could end up costing just as much as opting for a provider-hosted alternative.

At the same time, depending on which path you choose, you may also have limited recourse to external support. Jitsi, for example, warns that “neither the immediate Jitsi team or 8x8 provide commercial support for Jitsi. Jitsi does enjoy a large developer community with many development shops and individuals that provide support and commercial development services. If you need help, we recommend you do a search or post a request on our Community Forum.” It’s better than nothing, but you might have trouble convincing the board that this is a viable solution.

You’ll need suitable server hardware too. Thankfully, this isn’t a big ask: most services don’t need a ton of resources and will run in a container or virtual machine. Alternatively, you can use a very lightweight dedicated system; Jitsi and 3CX can both be installed on Raspberry Pi devices, for a terrifically cheap one-box solution.

TrueConf is another commercial service that supports the Raspberry Pi – and even allows you to download a ready-made Linux-based image that’s preinstalled with the conferencing software and all necessary documentation.

Redundancy

Running an on-site videoconferencing solution can cut ongoing costs, but it risks creating a single point of failure if your local infrastructure goes down. For this reason, even if you’re happy to own and manage your own communications services, it can make sense to let someone else host the server: cloud-based services should have contingencies for outages and multiple lines with automatic failover.

Many of the solutions discussed here can be hosted on the Azure, AWS or Google Cloud platforms. Amazon’s own Chime communications service, which runs on AWS, goes one step further, offering an SDK that developers can use to integrate its features into their own web or mobile applications, including SIP trunking, chat, collaboration and screen sharing.

Zoom out?

If you’ve only ever thought of videoconferencing as a closed, third-party service, the potential of setting up and operating your own services can be liberating – and economical. However, it also means taking on responsibilities – for installation, for maintenance, and possibly for loss of business if your system goes down.

Taking a cloud-hosted approach reduces that risk, but brings ongoing connectivity and capacity costs to consider, even if the software you’re running is itself free. And if you opt for a system without professional support then a misconfiguration or corrupted upgrade could also prove costly in engineer hours and lost productivity.

We’d recommend therefore that you don’t rush to ditch your current conferencing service. Today’s crop of commercial systems are robust, well-supported and easy to use – and often easier to roll out within an organisation than a self-managed solution.

Rather, the point is this: in past years, online videoconferencing might have seemed like a luxury or a gimmick. That’s no longer the case. Videoconferencing is right at the heart of business, and likely to remain there for a long time to come. It’s time to take a fresh look at your needs, and weigh up whether the time is right to take these crucial services into your own hands.

Given an explosion of remote working, with video conferencing thrust in the spotlight, we may have once expected Skype to seize the moment. After all, this is a platform that was eponymous with the concept of video communication not too long ago.

This titan of video conferencing has enjoyed something of a comeback in recent weeks, but it’s been overshadowed by the emergence of Zoom and Google’s own services.

Times have indeed changed, and the platform has languished in the shadow of these competitors as well as Microsoft’s enterprise-centric Teams service. There’s no better symbol for this decline than Microsoft’s decision to phase out Skype for Business.

Regardless, the free version of Skype still plays a vital role for many small businesses. The platform has undergone a 70% surge in activity during the coronavirus pandemic, in addition to a 220% explosion in Skype-to-Skype calls. In a market now saturated with rivals, does the legacy service have the legs to keep itself relevant?

Skype review: Design and UI

Skype’s user interface (UI) has undergone several overhauls through the years and, today, remains in keeping with Microsoft’s bold ‘fluent design’ aesthetic.

While the platform adheres to these design principles well, its minimalist aspirations don’t match up with how cluttered the interface is. On desktop, users are immediately met with a well-sized primary chat window to the right, beside a pale-toned sidebar into which most of the app’s functions are squashed. By default, the oversized pane shows a welcome screen.

Using this smaller panel you can cycle between recent chats, recent calls, contacts, and recent notifications. The interface also includes a ‘new call’ and new chat’ button as well as the recently launched ‘meet now’ feature. Double-clicking on any contact will beam your chat history to the right-hand panel. This mess of icons means it can prove fiddly to actually get to the function you need, so could have benefited from icons being spaced out more across the interface.

Despite this clash, navigating to the ‘Appearance’ tab in the Settings menu gives users a decent array of cosmetic options, including a fabulous dark mode, a choice between several accent tones, and two high-contrast settings.

Where the UI does excel is while dialled into a meeting. Only a handful of buttons remain on show, allowing participants to fill the remainder of the display. Advanced functions, instead of lining a portion of the screen, are hidden away in a ‘more options’ menu.

Skype review: Features and functionality

Skype offers a full array of basic features as well as a handful of more advanced features that have found their way into Skype from other services over the years. These include screen sharing and a neat real-time transcription toggle.

‘Meet now’, which allows users to send non-users a meeting link without them having to download the software, is an example of a feature that’s only made its way into the service following the meteoric rise of Zoom on the coattails of a similar feature. Putting aside the speculation as to why Skype’s only just rolled out a similar feature, it’s a welcome addition and boosts the user experience considerably.

The ‘blur background’ toggle, meanwhile, singles you out as the video subject effectively, while you can also add custom background images. Zoom goes one step further with a handful of preloaded images, and support for video, although lacks the blur background toggle - which is perhaps of more interest to business users than zany effects.

Although Skype includes several advanced features, one can’t help but feel limited by the way they’ve been implemented. While meetings can be recorded, the files are hidden away in your chat ‘gallery’ and are only available for 30 days. Sure, they can be subsequently saved onto your hard drive, but what if you just wanted these files beamed straight into your PC? Other applications include functionality for that. Finally, while you can share your screen at the touch of a button, other video conferencing services allow participants to share a portion of the screen, an individual app or even a ‘digital whiteboard’.

To its detriment, we did encounter a few glitches here and there. These manifested primarily as features taking a long time to work properly, and excessive menu loading-time. One fundamentally disruptive bug we encountered involved the live transcription feature in a meeting started using 'Meet now'. When activated, the application crashed only a few seconds later, after several attempts. This was odd because on several separate occasions, however, it worked flawlessly.

Skype review: Video and meeting experience

Alongside the lesser-known Lifesize, Skype is the only leading conferencing platform to offer 1080p video quality on its free tier, with Zoom and Hangouts limited to 720p. The maximum number of participants is also a strong 50, bested only by Zoom’s limit of 100. The latter, however, is limited in the way that meetings disconnect after 40 minutes, whereas Skype offers unlimited free video conferencing.

The main advantage Skype holds over its rivals is a clean UI while in meetings, to the extent it feels like a different app than that of the cluttered home screen. Meeting participants can be organised in several ways, but can only occupy a maximum of four large quadrants at any one time. Skype offers a neat way to work around this, with excess participants occupying small bubbles along the top which can be dragged into any quadrant to replace participants at any time.

Most functions beyond the most basic are tucked away in an expandable folder in the bottom-right-hand corner of the interface. From here, users can record meetings, toggle subtitles, and perform other functions. The live transcription feature is neat too, with real-time dialogue generated in small text without obscuring anybody’s face.

Skype review: Security provisions

All Skype-to-Skype calls, messages and file transfers are encrypted, according to the developers, through 256-bit advanced encryption standard (AES) protection. Should users wish to make calls to landlines, these conversations will take place over the standard public switched telephone network (PSTN) so won’t enjoy the same level of protection.

Instant messaging, meanwhile, is protected using transport-level security (TLS) which guards messages between the Skype client and the chat service in the platform’s cloud, as well as AES when communications are sent between two Skype clients.

Voice messages are encrypted on delivery, however once they have been listened to, the files are transferred from Skype servers to users’ local machines, where they are stored in an unencrypted format.

Beyond that, there are a set of standard protections built-into the platform to protect user privacy including automatically screening calls or messages from individuals who aren’t contacts. Users can also determine how long message history, chat titles, and videos will last before these are deleted. Files and voice messages as well as call recordings will be removed from the cloud after 30 days, although users can save them to their machines.

Skype review: Verdict

While there’s no doubting how far Skype has fallen in popularity from its peak around a decade ago, the most basic version of the legacy video conferencing suite still has plenty to offer new and existing users.

A host of basic features, strong security provisions and advanced tools like real-time transcription and the capacity to record meetings may indeed be enough to entice you away from increasingly popular alternatives. This is in addition to 1080p support, a healthy maximum participant cap, and no meeting time limit, if you’re willing to stomach a couple of minor glitches here and there.

Although a couple of these advanced features might fall short in places, there’s plenty to shout about. The eleventh-hour addition of a ‘meet now’ feature, too, means the classic version of Skype has been sufficiently retrofitted for the modern age.

Skype has launched 'Meet Now' calling, a Zoom-like feature that lets users join video call meetings without having to sign-up or install the app.

The new feature, which launches as Microsoft scrambles to reclaim users from rival Zoom, can be used by both Skype contacts and those who do not have an account, discarding the need to set up a profile and expanding the application’s reach to potential new customers.

The company also said that hosts, who don’t even need to have Skype installed, can create and share a free meeting with just three clicks. If the invitee has Skype installed, the app will launch directly to the call. If they do not already use the service, the call will be opened through the Skype web client that works in Chrome or Edge.

"Generate your free unique link with one click, share it with participants and enjoy unlimited meetings with Skype," Microsoft says. "Full set of features at your disposal. Your meeting link does not expire and can be used anytime."

The launch of ‘Meet Now’ can be attributed to the surge in popularity of Skype rival Zoom, which has seen its user base surge to more than 200 million a day during the COVID-19 pandemic as employees around the world are forced to work remotely.

Zoom’s popularity can likely be credited to the way that the app makes it fast and uncomplicated to share and join meetings. However, in recent weeks it's been revealed that this easy ease of use comes at a cost; the FBI issued a warning about “Zoom-bombing” and SpaceX banned the application over security fears.

Skype had also been the subject of controversy. Last year it was revealed that contractors working for Microsoft were reportedly listening to personal calls made using the app's translation function

In July 2019, Microsoft announced that it was calling time on Skype for Business Online as the company decided to shift the focus to Microsoft Teams instead.

There are many reasons why people want to change the platforms they use to perform critical business functions. Just as it might be for a range of platforms, it's just as true for those who want to move away from Skype as a tool for business communications.

Skype for Business is one of the most popular Voice over Internet Protocol (VoIP) services on the market, with a variety of features that are designed to adapt to the needs of varying roles and departments. The tool isn't quite right for everyone, however.

Microsoft launched Skype for Business shortly after buying the company in 2011, and although Skype was frequently used by organisations, the platform didn't feature the high-end features its users have now come to expect. Previously, the software giant offered a platform called Microsoft Lync, which essentially served the same purpose as Skype. It allowed users to instant message, as well as make calls over Wi-Fi and video conference in HD. The latter then replaced Microsoft's service.

In many instances, however, Skype for Business falls short of users' needs. For example, in some cases, the only iteration organisations deploy to employees are those which monitors communications like texts and voice calls. With privacy a growing concern across not just the workplace, but wider society, this seems deeply unattractive.

Functionality, too, may suffer in some instances, including an inability to call landlines for some users. A host of small but irritating bugs, meanwhile, that have arisen over the years could be enough to put somebody off entirely. This isn't to mention the mind-numbing plight of low-quality video and frustrating connectivity issues.

So if you want to discontinue using Skype For Business or want to remove a user that, for example, may no longer work for the company anymore, you can do so in a variety of ways.

Here, we explain how to remove a user from Skype for Business.

Deleting a Skype for Business account

Removing a user on a basic level is a pretty simple task. From Office 365, go to the Office 365 Admin portal, then Active Users and select the user you want to delete. Hit 'Edit' under Product Licenses, choose the license type and deselect Skype for Business under the listed applications. Finish by applying the changes.

Using Skype for Business Server Management Shell to remove a user

Now, this is a little more complicated. If you want to remove a user account assigned to the CsUserAdministrator role or the CsAdministrator role, you'll need to access the Skype for Business Server Control Panel.

To do this, enter the Admin URL into your Web browser, select Users and then select Search, inputting the user account name you wish to delete. Select the account you want to remove and from the Action menu, choose Remove from Lync Server. You'll then be asked to confirm you want to delete the user. Select OK and the user will be deleted.

Using Windows PowerShell cmdlets to remove user accounts

Skype for Business user accounts can also be removed by using the Disable-CsUser cmdlet. For example, type in the following: Disable-CsUser Identity "username". When this command has been run, you cannot re-enable the account and its previous settings. Instead, you will have to use the Enable-CsUser cmdlet to create a brand-new account for the user.

Removing Skype for Business from a computer

You can remove Skype for Business if you have installed an MSI-based Office, with the Click-to-Run version installed, all you can do is disable it. If you have MSI based Office installed, go to appwiz.cpl and click on the Skype For Business icon to change it to "Not Available".

Skype has announced new AI-driven captions to work on the latest version of its software, for both one-to-one conversations and group calls, with the same technology being rolled out to PowerPoint early next year.

The tech giant confirmed the plans yesterday, which was the United Nations International Day for Persons with Disabilities. With inclusivity and ease of use in mind, Skype now supports live captions and subtitles to help those who are deaf or hard of hearing connect with the people in their life, be it a family catch-up or an important meeting at work.

The feature can be activated on a call-by-call basis through the in-call screen or simply set to activate by default by changing the settings under Settings > Calling > Call Subtitles > then toggle Show Subtitles for all voice and video calls.

At the moment, the captions and subtitles will auto-scroll in the in-call screen, like a livestream's chat feed, but Skype promises new viewing options will be made available soon including the ability to scroll through them at one's own pace in a side window. Translation support for more 20 languages will also be included in the near future.

The same AI-driven subtitle technology will also be applied to Microsoft PowerPoint in Early 2019 for Office 365 subscribers running Windows 10, according to a recent statement.

The tech will be even more advanced than Skype's, providing not only real-time captions and subtitles but also automatically translating them depending on the native language of the audience. This will enable everyone, of all nations, cultures and hearing abilities to thoroughly engage in presentations.

At launch, the tech will support 12 spoken languages and display on-screen captions or subtitles in one of more than 60 languages.

From the world's first webcam, created by students at Cambridge University in 1991 to check the levels of a coffee pot, video calling has developed into a crucial tool for businesses and individual users alike.

Video calling services have been around for over a decade now, and only become more accessible as internet connectivity and video stability improves. With current smartphone ownership at 2.53 billion worldwide and expected to rise to 2.87 billion by 2020, video calling is a touch of a button away for an ever-expanding number of people.

With an array of different providers, though, it's easy to get bogged down in choosing what's best for you and your team.

We've looked at four of the biggest players out there - Microsoft's Skype, as well as Apple's Facetime and Google Hangouts, and the Google Duo service available for Android and iOS - to help you decide which should be your video chat app of choice.

Platforms and availability

Most of the video chat options we're comparing are available on multiple platforms, but Skype and Google hangouts are the most widely-supported, as they're both framed as enterprise collaboration tools.

Hangouts is available via a web app or via mobile apps for iOS and Android. Skype is best known for its desktop client - available for Windows, Mac and Linux - but also has a web plugin. Once downloaded, you have access to free calls to landlines, mobile devices and other Skype accounts. However, the plugin only works through Chrome and Edge for a Windows browser and Chrome for a Mac, and does not work for Linux and Chromebooks.

Facetime, as you might expect, is only available on Apple devices, but it's included with desktop devices as well as iPhones and iPads. Since 2017, Google Duo has been integrated into Google Phone, Contacts and Android Messages on the Pixel, Nexus and Android One phones, and can be downloaded on other Android phones as well. Currently, there is no desktop or web client available, but as of January 2018, Duo users can call other Android phones that do not even have Duo. Recipients will simply be prompted to install Duo at the end of the call.

User Interfaces and Features

Facetime and Google Duo are both going for barebones simplicity with their apps. They're aiming to make video calling as simple as possible, with no unnecessary features to get in the way. Both apps simply present a live video feed from your front camera along with a list of contacts. One tap launches a call, with a couple of big buttons for muting the audio, reversing the camera feed or ending the call.

Skype and Hangouts, by contrast, have a lot more features. They're pitched as full collaboration solutions, meaning that as well as video calling, they also do group video conferencing, instant messaging and filesharing, whereas Facetime and Duo don't. As a result, the user interface is a lot more cluttered and complex, especially if all you want to do is start a video chat.

In one of the last large updates, Skype 7.32 released in January 2017, users gained a handful of new features, including touch-friendly popups, customisable keyboard shortcuts and video voicemails for unanswered calls.

On the other hand, Hangouts and Skype are both a lot more versatile than Duo or Facetime, allowing you to do more during chats. They're both largely comparable in terms of functionality, but Skype just edges over with the ability to transfer any filetype - Hangouts only allows image transfers.

Call quality

Of course, any video calling service is largely dependent on internet connection, so if one of the parties has substandard connectivity it can affect the overall quality. However, server architecture and distribution can also make a difference to the end-user experience.

Call quality via the Hangouts app was a little shaky, with a delay of around a second and sporadic artifacting (extreme pixellation) of the video stream. It also took longer than some of the other apps to load and connect our calls. The experience was much the same when using the web app on desktop, but it does have a quality slider that lets lower-bandwidth users adjust the stream quality from within the call.

Duo, despite presumably using the same servers and infrastructure as Hangouts, managed to be much speedier at connecting our calls, with reliably better video quality and negligible lag. This is possibly due to the lightweight nature of the app itself, but regardless, we had an excellent experience with Duo.

Skype's call quality was good, with no artifacting and minimal delays on the stream. However, we did have some trouble with getting our contacts' video feeds to appear, which necessitated hanging up and recalling.

Facetime was generally reliable, with only occasional lag and very little artifacting. However, we did have some issues with certain WiFi networks blocking our calls, which wasn't a problem with other services.

Verdict

We've researched and tested the four major video calling services, but in the end, the choice is yours. The app that will deliver the most to you depends on your specific needs. If it's the complete communications package you're after, Skype boasts a line-up of features to help maximise your collaboration and productivity efforts. As part of the Office 365 family, it's also included with new deployments of Microsoft's software suite.

If it's the streamlined video calling you want, though, stripped of all the extra integrations Skype offers, Google Duo provides a simple, clean experience available on Android and iOS, with calling access to non-Duo users with Android phones. For its simplicity and ease of use, Duo takes the overall crown for best video calling service.

An outage hit Microsoft's main cloud software products, including Outlook.com, Hotmail, Office 365 and OneDrive, last night with all geographies appearing to have been affected.

Between roughly 4pm and 7pm BST, users trying to access services that use the login.live.com authentication portal were unable to do so.

This would have been most apparent to those using the browser, where the login page would fail to load and clicking the 'login' link sometimes resulted in a file download. However, the Skype desktop client was also affected and users were unable to send or receive emails from their Outlook, Hotmail or Live accounts using clients on their phones or desktops either.

One notable exception, however, is that those using Outlook with Windows 10 were still able to receive emails throughout the disruption period.

All of the services listed and more use login.live.com as a central authentication portal. They also all run on Microsoft's Azure cloud infrastructure, although according to the service dashboard, there was no problem with Azure during the outage.

Down Detector recorded 7,995 outage incidents just before 7pm last night but shows far fewer now, and it seems most users can now login, as confirmed by downforeveryoneorjustme.com and independently by IT Pro. But Microsoft has indicated that some issues remain.

In a statement to IT Pro, a Redmond spokesperson said: "We are aware that some users are experiencing difficulties signing in to some services. Engineers are working to fully resolve this as soon as possible."

The root cause of the outage, the total number of customers affected and whether there was any risk to customers at any point is as yet unclear.

Microsoft is discontinuing its Skype WiFi service, which offered many small businesses the option to connect to Wi-Fi hotspots when out and about.

Skype has been operating more than two million hotspots globally following its launch as Skype Credit, which launched in 2009. The app is currently available on iOS, Android, and Windows devices.

However, from 31 March, the application won't be available to download and if you're already using the app, it won't find and use hotspots any longer, meaning there's little point keeping it installed on your smartphone or tablet.

"We're retiring Skype WiFi globally so we can better focus our efforts on bringing you the best possible experience through our core Skype features," Microsoft said in an FAQ about the move.

However, it's not clear what these services are or how they will be improved to make up for the service gap. Although there's a similar service for Windows 10 devices, called Microsoft Wi-Fi, this isn't yet avalable on Android or iOS.

Customers making use of the Skype Wi-Fi service will be able to use their Skype credit for other services if they have any left over. But if they don't want to use their credit towards other services offered by the communication giant, they can approach the company for a refund.

Microsoft acquired Skype and all its services in 2011 for $8.5 billion, at which point Microsoft said it would continue support for the VoIP organisation's services, with Skype running as a subsidiary of the technology giant.

Microsoft and Salesforce have teamed up to bring Skype for Business functionality into the latter firm's CRM platform.

Skype for Salesforce provides real-time communication between sellers and their colleagues directly from the Salesforce Lightning Experience. According to Microsoft, this allows users and, by proxy, the companies they work for, to "significantly reduce the turnaround time on sales tasks and customer queries".

"Amidst all the disruption that enterprises are experiencing today, one thing has remained constant – real-time communications are still fundamental to workplace productivity," said the Skype for Business team in a blog post.

"By embedding real-time communications into applications, you can instantly transform business processes, make them more agile and deliver a better service to your partners and customers," it added.

The integration of Skype for Business is thanks to the updated Skype Web SDK, which was announced earlier this year, that allows cloud software providers to integrate Skype for Business features into their own platforms, such as chat, audio and video.

"Salesforce is a great showcase of how the new Skype Web SDK can be used to deliver a customised and integrated communication experience directly from the browser and without the need for any plug-ins," the blog post said.

This is also an example of the fruition of the partnership announced by Microsoft and Salesforce in September last year, in which the two companies vowed to "deliver new solutions that integrate Salesforce with Skype for business, OneNote, Delve and Windows 10".

Microsoft will axe its UK Skype office, resulting in redundancies for both Skype and Yammer employees, it said.

Although Microsoft didn't confirm when or why it would be shutting down Skype's UK office, it said it has "made the decision to unify some engineering positions, potentially putting at risk a number of globally focused Skype and Yammer roles."

Microsoft said it is inviting employees to take part in a consultation process, where it will decide who stays and who goes, but it said it will make the process as easy as it can on those affected.

"We are deeply committed to doing everything we can to help those impacted through the process," it continued.

Although not unexpected, because Microsoft said it would be scrapping 2,850 jobs across the organisation in the fourth quarter of 2016, former employees of both Skype and Microsoft are shocked that it has decided to lose such an influential part of the company.

"This is disappointing," Russ Shaw, founder of industry group Tech London Advocates and previously vice-president of Skype EMEA told the Financial Times. He left the company when Skype was bought by Microsoft.

"Skype is one of Europe's iconic technology businesses and a genuine unicorn' with an amazing pedigree of innovation and talent. While London is working hard to build a strong base of world-class technology businesses, this decision is a step in the wrong direction."

Microsoft will not close down other Skype offices around the world and some will remain in Europe, but insiders have suggested the company wants to replace pre-acquisition staff with its own.

Microsoft has announced it will cease to support its Skype app on Windows Phone and Android devices running a version older than Ice Cream Sandwich, as part of its plans to move its systems fully to the cloud.

This change will make more features available on the platform, such as mobile group video calling, Skype Translator and Skype Bots, but it also means support for older devices will be scrapped.

Although the majority of Android devices are running newer iterations of Google's operating system, it will come as a blow to those who are using a Nokia smartphone, for example.

"The pace of change in our industry means that the devices and operating systems used by the majority of people shifts with time," Gurdeep Pall, corporate vice president of Microsoft's Skype & Skype for Business division said. "Our commitment to deliver the best possible cross-platform experiences requires that we continually assess when it's time to increase our focus on the platforms of the future."

He explained the company will continue to support Windows 7, 8, XP and Vista, Yosemite on Mac, iOS 8 and Android 4.03, but any device not running these specified platforms will n longer be able to use the app.

Pall also revealed details about the company's investments into new technologies to make the experience of using Skype better. Microsoft will instead look at improving call quality and improving the responsive UWP app for Windows 10, Skype for iPhone, iPad and Android, plus its web-based native version that will be the only option for those using devices that are no longer supported.

"Skype's transition to the cloud is a huge technical endeavour, but one that is necessary and one we firmly believe in," Pall continued. "Our users are at the core of everything we do and this transition will enable us to meet their needs in the years to come.

Skype has rolled out a free group video conferencing service aimed at small businesses.

Skype Meetings allows users to set up meetings via personalised URLs, which can be distributed to all the participants, regardless of whether or not they have Skype – a feature that was introduced to the full-fat software earlier this year.

“During the meeting, participants can IM, share their screen or PowerPoint presentation or use the laser pointer and whiteboard features to make it more engaging and productive,” explained Andrew Sinclair, general manager for Skype for Business. “The meeting organiser also gets professional meeting controls such as the ability to mute the audience in order to be heard.”

Skype is offering the service for US customers only for the moment.

Any US customers with a business email address who do not already have an Office 365 subscription can sign up for Skype Meetings at www.skype.com/meetings.

After signing up, users can set up meetings for up to 10 people for the first 60 days, and up to three people after the end of the trial period.

Skype Meetings gives small businesses a taste of Microsoft’s premium Skype for Business services, such as the ability to share screens and content during meetings.

Those with Office 365 subscriptions – including Skype for Business – will already have access to “richer online meetings capabilities”, Skype said, such as the means to host large group meetings for up to 250 people and integration with Microsoft apps like Outlook, Word and PowerPoint.

Skype introduced its Skype for Business service in March. The service boosts more dedicated features than its regular version, from allowing collaborative document editing to the ability to natively save video conference calls.

Microsoft has signed an agreement with Chinese electronics company, Xiaomi, to pre-install several of its apps on "millions" of Android handsets.

As part of the deal, Xiaomi will include Microsoft Office and Skype on its Android-powered smartphones and tablets, which will predominantly be sold in China, India and other countries in the Far East and South America.

Microsoft said that "tens of millions of consumers and business customers" in these regions will now have greater access to its collaboration and communication software, such as Word, Excel, PowerPoint and Outlook.

This deal follows Microsoft's announcement last month that it would be pulling out of the consumer mobile market, and cutting 1,850 jobs in the process.

Versions of popular Office applications, such as Word and OneNote, have been available for iOS and Android for some years now. But Microsoft's push to get its apps pre-installed on handsets demonstrates that it is not backing away from mobile entirely, despite reducing its effort towards its failed Windows Phone platform.

"People want their favourite apps and experiences to work seamlessly on the device of their choice, and that's exactly what this partnership offers," said Peggy Johnson, executive vice president of business development at Microsoft.

"Together with Xiaomi, we're bringing the very best in mobile productivity to millions more customers in China and around the world."

Xiaomi is long-time partner of Microsoft, and is also the only Android handset manufacturer which offers a Windows 10 Mobile ROM for one of its phones.

From September 2016, Xiaomi Android devices which include the Mi 5, Mi Max, Mi 4s, Redmi Note 3 and Redmi 3 will come pre-installed with Microsoft Word, Excel, PowerPoint, Outlook and Skype applications.

The specific apps may vary by device, market and mobile operator.

The companies' new collaboration also includes a cross-license and patent transfer agreement.

Pre-installed apps are major business, and companies have gotten into trouble for incentivising handset manufacturers to offer selected apps on their devices. Recently, Google came under fire from the European Commission which concluded that the Android maker's collection of pre-installed apps have stunned competition for other app developers and service providers in Europe.

Being a small company in a big channel can make things difficult.

You not only have to juggle the demands of your customers, but also manage your suppliers as well, and they don’t always make it easy for you. To a vendor, you are often a small fish in a big VAR-filled pond, but to your customer you’re often the difference between success and failure as you solve their IT problems and help them innovate to increase profits.

This means you have to choose the suppliers you work with carefully: one reneged contract might not affect their business, but it could destroy yours.

Court fee rises last year have put another obstacle in the way of smaller businesses seeking justice. VARs or MSPs who might potentially be relying on software or services from the supplier, do not typically have the finance to go up against multinational vendors, and therefore, in the event of a breach of contract or instance of professional negligence that directly harms the relationship with the reseller’s end user, tend to shy away from such conflicts.

In fact, research shows more than a quarter of small and medium sized businesses have felt bullied by a larger company or corporation when concerned with general business matters.

The problem is hiring legal help could end up costing your business a fortune – indeed the same research showed 15 percent of SMEs wouldn’t litigate because it’s too expensive and ten percent because of uncertainty over fear of losing: traditional hourly lawyer fees could bankrupt your business, especially if you’re up against a vendor with deep pockets. Furthermore, if you are lucky enough to have an in-house counsel, they might not have the required experience to stand toe-to-toe with the lawyers your supplier has at their command. To a small channel business, it feels like David going up against Goliath.

So how can you combat this? What is your secret weapon? How can a VAR face up to its suppliers without suffering sleepless nights worrying about costs?

The answer is surprisingly simple – litigation funding. Typically SMEs are not aware of the alternative litigation funding options available to them, which remove the risk of standing up to suppliers.

For a share of the winnings, ranging from 10 to 30 percent, a funder pays for the whole litigation process, including the legal fees if the case fails. This allows a VAR to completely remove any risk from the balance sheet and free up cash flow for more important areas of the business. You shift 100 percent of the risk for a small share of the damages.

In addition to this, After the Event (ATE) insurance could reduce the risk of a claim even further. Traditional insurance is ‘Before the Event’, meaning you insure yourself against the event taking place, but ‘After the Event’ insurance is taken out after the event has happened and it means if your claim is unsuccessful, you don’t have to pay your opponent’s legal fees.

In addition a recent study showed that 67 percent of businesses were not aware they could use litigation as a contingent asset. Essentially, any litigation funding gained is not tied down to the legal costs, you can actually use the finance for other areas of your business, such as product development, international expansion, or growth. This means that organisations can use their claims to fund their growth, even if the claim turns out to be unsuccessful.

A combination of litigation funding options will level the playing field between you and your supplier, meaning they will take you more seriously, increasing your chances of getting the best settlement possible.

So, if you find yourself wronged by a business partner used to getting their own way don’t worry about legal costs – if you have a valid case there are plenty of funders that will happily sit in your corner and help you secure justice, without you worrying about your funds running out and your business being put at risk.

Mark Beaumont is co-founder of Annecto Legal

Microsoft has announced its Skype Translator is now available to all Windows users and supports 50 messaging languages and six voice languages.

The feature was first announced a year ago and has been in preview testing until now, only just becoming available as an integrated part the desktop version of the VoIP app for Windows - including Windows 7, Windows 8 and, of course, Windows 10.

English, French, German, Italian, Mandarin, Spanish voice languages will all be supported and Microsoft has also revealed 50 languages can be used with its messaging feature.

"It has been a long-time dream at Skype to break down language barriers and bring everyone across the globe closer together," explains Microsoft's Skype team. "Researchers, engineers, and many others across Microsoft have been working hard to make this dream a reality and we are looking forward to bringing this preview technology to more devices."

Skype Translator uses machine learning that improves as more people use it. Although previewers helped to some extent, opening up will provide more opportunity for development.

"Already, early users of the preview have helped it improve tremendously, and now with this broader release we are excited to see the additional progress we can make from expanded use," the company commented.

Previously, testers were required to sign up and wait to be admitted to the scheme before being able to directly translate speech to and from English, Chinese (Mandarin), Italian and Spanish.

Skype's product marketing manager, Yasmin Khan, said in a blog post back in June that a greater number of users would improve the translating technology.

"We are thrilled with the positive response from around the world, and especially thankful to ALL of the early adopters who downloaded the application, and use it every day," she wrote.

"Remember: Skype Translator uses machine learning, so the more people use the technology, the better the experience for everyone!"

Currently, the Skype Translator preview can translate between English, Spanish, Italian and Mandarin, as well as 50 written languages in its instant messaging function.

More users means the machine learning behind the app can improve its understanding of phrases and accents to become more accurate.

Microsoft said it will add more languages to the app as they meet its quality standard.

Microsoft launched Skype Translator last December and, initially, only a select number of people were able to use it. Khan highlighted one of the early adopter testers in a blog post, praising non-profit development organisation Pro Mujer based in New York. The company provides women in Latin America with financial, health, and human development services and is using Skype Translator to communicate with them.

"We are very proud of Pro Mujer's mission, and we're delighted they're finding value in using Skype generally, and Skype Translator to make an impact in so many people's lives," Khan said.

Head to our sister site Alphr for a review of Skype Translator preview.

This article was originally published on the 26/11/14 and has been updated multiple times (most recently on 02/10/15).

Skype will appear in court over its refusal to share customer data in relation to a criminal investigation, it has been reported.

The Microsoft-owned firm declined to help Belgian authorities by providing details of messages and calls between two suspects in a criminal case, according to Reuters.

The VoIP provider argued that it is not a telecoms company, and therefore isn't bound by the country's Telecom Act, which requires telcos to assist police in such cases by handing over data on suspects.

A court from the town of Mechelen has now decided to summon Skype to court, with a date pegged for early June.

A court spokesman told Reuters: "The judicial question is whether Skype is also a telecoms operator."

If so, it would have to give up the data and risk a fine for its lack of co-operation.

The news comes as Microsoft plans its appeal against a New York court ruling that would force it to give the US access to customer data stored in Dublin-based servers.

Cisco, Apple and Salesforce have all pledged support to the tech giant, which argues that data stored in Europe should not be subject to US legal powers.

If it loses the case, the strength of the EU-US Safe Harbour agreement will be undermined.

The deal guarantees that EU-based data will receive adequate privacy protections if it is moved outside the EU.

The news follows whistleblower Edward Snowden's revelations that the NSA, a US spy agency, collected data from leading tech companies to snoop on citizens across the world.

A new encrypted video calling service, MegaChat, has been launched by Kim Dotcom to overthrow Microsoft-owned Skype from its perch.

MegaChat is designed to offer more security to users' private conversations, and has been developed by the "Conspiracy Team" at Mega to encrypt communications through the service, reports RT. The service is encrypted from end-to-end, unlike rival services, which will add extra assurance to users.

It currently offers audio and video calling, but the program totted up around half a million calls within hours of the announcement via Dotcom's Twitter account on Thursday. He also predicted that the service could boost Mega's registered user count from 15 million to over 100 million by the end of 2015.

The German entrepreneur announced a messaging and video conference call service would be added soon.

It follows worrying reports from Edward Snowden that the NSA had been working with Skype to monitor certain conversations made via the service. This would not be possible with a MegaChat level of encryption.

Some of the former leadership team at Skype, including the co-founder Janus Friis, have launched a new messaging app, Wire, in December in the hopes of going up against services such as iMessage, WhatsApp and Viber.

Co-founder and CEO of Wire, Jonathan Christensen, said: "We asked ourselves how modern communications could look and work. How could we take full advantage of the latest devices and advances in cloud computing to deliver something that is really simple, very useful and truly beautiful?"

The founders of Skype have launched a new messaging app, set to take on the likes of iMessage, WhatsApp and Viber.

Wire, which is launching on Android, iOS and OS X, allows people to cross-platform communicate with an emphasis on personal and group messaging, voice calling, sharing pictures, SoundCloud music and YouTube video sharing.

Jonathan Christensen, Wire's co-founder and CEO, said:"We asked ourselves how modern communications could look and work. How could we take full advantage of the latest devices and advances in cloud computing to deliver something that is really simple, very useful and truly beautiful?"

Voice calling is 'high fidelity', meaning any calls made over Wi-Fi will reportedly sound clearer than other rival voice platforms out there.

Communications will be synched across devices, includingWebRTC-compatible browsers, that can also be used to access the service.

Skype co-founder Janus Friis added:"Skype was launched more than a decade ago. A lot has changed since then - we are all used to free calls and texting, and we have taken to carrying our computers in our pockets.

"It is time to create the best possible communication tools, as beautiful as they are useful. Wire is just that."

Others involved in the development and rollout of the platform include developers and techies fromApple, Skype, Nokia, and Microsoft.

Skype was sold to Microsoft in May 2011 for a cool $8.5bn and since then, it has rolled out new features on the platform including Skype Translator and integrated the software giant'sCortana personal assistant on Windows Phone devices.

Microsoft's focus on mobile technologies is developing fast. It announced the acquisition of Nokia at the beginning of the year and in Octoberstripped the 'Nokia' branding from new devices.

Microsoft is offering its Office, Xbox Gold, Xbox Music Pass and Skype Unlimited World packages for a one-off combined fee of $199 (125) - saving US customers more than $200.

The Work & Play Bundle includes a year's access to Office 365 Home so those who buy it can access Word, Excel, PowerPoint, Outlook and 1TB of OneDrive storage in addition to gaming on XBox Gold, music on the company's music streaming service and its Skype Unlimited World package that offers limitless calls to landlines and Wi-Fi access.

If you already have a subscription to any of the services, you can pay the $199 and an extra year will automatically be added onto your services from when you decide to activate the codes given at purchase.

However, the deal is only available for a limited time (until January 4) and will only be available from Microsoft retail stores rather than online. And just in the US, at least for now.

As companies move more towards subscription models, Microsoft continues to show its dedication to rolling services rather than owning software by buying it upfront.

Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella said the company will be focusing on productivity in the years to come and bundling its main productivity and entertainment services in one bundle certainly makes sense.

The move has led some industry watchers to suggest we could soon see a wider selection of business and personal bundles rolling out in a bid to keep its users happy and stay competitive against the likes of Adobe, which offers its productivity services as a mix and match option and Apple.

Yesterday, Nadella spoke about the need to constantly innovate in order for a business survive - bunding apps in this way might not be revolutioning, but it does show innovation in terms of responding to consumer buying habits.

Nokia has set out plans to bring a slew of Android-powered devices to market.

The first member of the family to come off the production line will be the 4in Nokia X. This is expected to go on sale in the coming weeks for around 89.

It reportedly boasts a 3MP camera, and a dual-core 1GHz Qualcomm Snapdragon processor, but it is the device's user interface that has garnered the most attention.

The Nokia X features a customised version of Android, which echoes the familiar live tile look and feel of the Finnish phone maker's Windows-powered devices.

It also features support for Microsoft products, such as Skype, Outlook and OneDrive, from the get go.

Furthermore, device users will not have access to Google Play, but will instead use a Nokia-specific version of the Android app store.

The reason for this may lie in Nokia's disclosure that 25 per cent of Android apps will not work straightaway with the device. However, the company has stressed it hopes software developers will work to reduce the number of incompatible apps over time.

The Nokia X will be joined later on by the Nokia X+, which will feature extra memory, and the 5in Nokia XL. Both devices are billed for release in early Q2, with the former expected to retail at 99 and the latter for 109.

Nokia made the announcements at Mobile World Congress earlier today, which is taking place all this week in Barcelona.

Speaking at the event, Stephen Elop, CEO of Nokia, said the Nokia X's low price point is a "massive opportunity" for the smartphone maker that strengthens its play in the affordable devices market.

He also billed the device as a way to attract new users and developers to the Nokia platform.

"For developers, the Nokia X is a great way...to increase their revenues, and we will offer a bunch of different monetisation options," Elop added.

Tony Cripps, principal analyst at market watcher Ovum, said the Nokia X family will provide end users with a wider choice of low-cost devices, and should force other OEMs to up their game.

"The new Nokia X smartphones offer a desirable alternative to cheap Android devices for consumers in both mature and developing markets and will help provide balance within carrier device portfolios at both the OEM and software platform level," said Cripps.

"Android application developers should welcome Nokia X, both as an additional channel to market and as a new revenue opportunity. Minimal porting overhead means there is little reason to wait for a critical mass of devices before committing to supporting the platform"

Skype has fallen victim to a social media hack attack allegedly carried out by The Syrian Electronic Army (SEA).

The Microsoft-owned cloud-based VoIP service lost control of its Twitter account and its blog on the evening of 1 January.

During the attack, the collective posted a number of tweets attacking Microsoft over its alleged involvement in the Prism surveillance scandal.

Messages included the warning “Don't use Microsoft emails (hotmail, outlook), They (sic) are monitoring your accounts and selling the data to the governments. More details soon. #SEA”, as well as the contact information of outgoing Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer, adding “You can thank Microsoft for monitoring your accounts/emails using this (sic) details. #SEA”

While the company was able to regain control of its Twitter account within approximately six hours, and this morning tweeted that no user information had been compromised, the blog url still redirects to the Skype homepage at the time of publication.

Other social media platforms, including Facebook and Google+, were not affected.

Skype is the latest in a long line of companies to be targeted by the SEA. In April, Twitter reprimanded several media organisations, including the BBC, France 24, the Guardian and CBS, after they lost control of their Twitter accounts.

In May, BSkyB’s Google Play and Twitter accounts were compromised and in August, the blog of Channel 4 News anchor Jon Snow also fell victim to an attack.

Rik Ferguson, VP of security research at Trend Micro, said: “This method of attack has become a standard tactic of the SEA over the past couple of years. The only unusual aspect to this most recent hijack is the content of the messages, being more to do with the Snowden revelations and less to do directly with events in Syria.”

A Skype spokesperson reiterated the company’s Tweet this morning, stating: “We recently became aware of a targeted cyber-attack that led to access to Skype’s social media properties, but these credentials were quickly reset. No user information was compromised.”

The firm added its blog is currently offline "s a precautionary measure", but declined to comment on the vector of the attack.

Skype, Microsoft's voice over IP (VoIP) service, is allegedly under investigation by the Luxembourgish data protection commissioner regarding its involvement in the American online spying programme PRISM.

The Guardian reports the Redmond giant, which acquired Luxembourg-based Skype in 2011, could face criminal and administrative sanctions, including a ban on passing communications to the American National Security Agency (NSA), which ran PRISM, if it is found to have broken Luxembourgish data protection laws.

Skype could also be fined individually if it is found to have transgressed, the newspaper claimed.

The investigation hinges on an article in the Luxembourgish constitution, which holds individuals' rights to privacy to be absolute and secrecy of correspondence to be inviolable.

This definitive right to privacy can only be broken and communications monitored following judicial approval or authorisation of a tribunal selected by the prime minister.

The investigation will reportedly examine whether or not Skype violated the constitution in this regard when it handed over user generated data resulting from conversations on the service to the NSA.

A complicating factor, according to the Guardian, is the possibility Skype's transfer of data to the NSA may have been sanctioned by the state through a secret legal assistance or data transfer agreement, which would not be known by the commissioner at the beginning of the investigation.

Both the Luxembourgish data protection commissioner and Microsoft declined to comment to the Guardian.

The news comes just two weeks after Microsoft issued its latest transparency report, which it has begun to release on a regular basis to try and boost consumer confidence in the wake of the PRISM scandal.

The report showed 3,509 requests were received from governments worldwide for data from Skype during the first six months of 2013. While some data was handed over on almost every occasion, Microsoft claims to have never handed over the content of messages during that period.

In Luxembourg, 33 requests referring to 90 individual accounts were made, and 75.8 per cent of those requests resulted in subscriber and/or transactional data being handed over, while in the remaining 24.2 per cent of cases no data was found.

Microsoft disclosed no Skype content data to governments in the first six months of 2013, according to the company’s latest transparency report.

The organisation received 3,509 requests globally for information relating to 10,585 individual Skype customer accounts.

In 82 per cent of cases some data was handed over, but the actual content of messages or calls was not disclosed.

In the UK, 759 requests were made for data regarding 1,564 Skype accounts.

The vast majority (86.3 per cent) resulted in only subscriber/transactional data being handed over. However, a further four per cent of requests were rejected by the company, while in 9.7 per cent of cases no data was found.

According to Microsoft, the US, UK, France and Germany accounted for a combined 70 per cent of all requests for Skype user data.

Furthermore, the UK was in the top five countries requesting user data from Microsoft operations, along with the US, Germany, Turkey and France, who together made 73 per cent of all requests.

Most of the requests submitted by governments relate to personal users of cloud-based tools rather than those related to business, the company claimed.

“In the context of our enterprise services...we addressed a total of 19 requests for e-mail accounts we host for entities, such as universities or other businesses. Those 19 requests sought information about 48 accounts. We disclosed customer data in response to five of those requests (4 content; 1 only non-content), and in all but one case, we were able to notify the customer," the report said.

"We rejected the request, found no responsive data, or redirected law enforcement to obtain the information from the customer directly in 13 of those cases."

This is the second of Microsoft’s Law Enforcement Requests reports, the first having been published in March 2013 in the wake of the PRISM surveillance scandal.

“Microsoft remains committed to respecting human rights, free expression, and individual privacy. We seek to operate all of the services we own in a manner that’s consistent with our Global Human Rights Statement and responsibilities as a member of the Global Network Initiative,” the company said.

Xbox One, Microsoft's next generation cloud-friendly gaming console, will be released on 22 November.

Larry Hyrb, director of programming for Xbox Live, has also posted photos on his blog of what he claims are the first pallet of Xbox One console's that are set to be distributed.

Hyrb's pictures were posted at the same time as Microsoft confirmed a 22 November release date for the next generation console across 13 territories, including the UK. Other markets will follow in 2014, the company has said.

Yusuf Mehdi, corporate vice president of marketing, strategy and business for Xbox said in a post on Xbox Wire: "We are humbled and gratified by the tremendous interest in Xbox One from game fans everywhere. We have sold out of our pre-order supply in the US faster than at any other time in our history and we are on path to have the biggest launch of an Xbox ever."

Mehdi also noted that 22 November was the launch date of Xbox One's predecessor, the Xbox 365, some eight years ago.

Xbox One is one of a new generation of cloud-connected entering the market this Autumn, along with the PS4, which has led the Redmond giant to overhaul its gaming network.

Tipped as the ‘next generation of Xbox Live’, Microsoft’s existing network for gamers, the service will now save not only profiles and achievements to the cloud, but also game saves. This, the company claims, means “every Xbox One console behaves like your very own”.

Hosted on Microsoft's Windows Azure cloud platform, Xbox Live will continue to offer a cloud-based music service, launched originally in October 2012, as well as access to live TV and streamed movies like rival service Netflix.

However, the company claims that as the cloud “is a scalable source of power [it] will grow stronger over time”. This, Microsoft has indicated, will eventually lead to a proportion of the back-end computation being carried out in the cloud, improving the console's performance. Users have also been promised unlimited cloud storage through the console.

Furthermore, the inclusion of Windows Azure technology will benefit game developers who will be able to use the service as a platform on which they can wholly or partly build Xbox games.

Additionally, Xbox One will also run a Hyper-V-based virtualisation technology, which will take up the bulk of system resources and allow each virtual machine to draw its own screen constantly.

This, Microsoft claims, will enable users to flick instantly between games and applications such as its Voice over IP (VoIP) offering Skype (which users recently found out they will have to pay for), browse the internet with Internet Explorer or live TV, although it is not clear how this final feature will work outside the US.

While it is unclear how much of Microsoft’s existing Windows 8 or RT operating systems will be carried over to Xbox OS, the demonstration of the platform at its unveiling event did feature the now familiar ‘live tiles’ interface, first featured on its Windows Phone OS.

Microsoft is not the only technology company to be working on bringing cloud into people’s living rooms. It is widely anticipated that Sony’s next generation console, the PS4, will include cloud gaming features following the Japanese giant’s purchase of Gaikai in 2012 for £240 million.

Skype, the Voice-over-IP (VoIP) service which was acquired in 2011 by Microsoft, has celebrated its 10th birthday by announcing plans to develop 3D video calling technology.

Microsoft's corporate vice president for Skype, Mike Gillett, told the BBC the company had been working to develop 3D calling technology in its labs and that the organisation knows "how to make it work".

However, he said Microsoft is currently examining the "ecosystem of devices and their capability to support 3D calling" in order to determine when such a product could be successfully brought to market.

"We've seen a lot of progress in screens and a lot of people now buy TVs and computer monitors that are capable of delivering a 3D image," said Gillett.

"But the capture devices are not yet there. As we work with that kind of technology you have to add multiple cameras to your computer, precisely calibrate them and point them at the right angle."

Skype has been considered by many as a pioneer in the VoIP space and has been lauded as such on its anniversary.

"Skype's first decade is something that internet start-ups dream of," said Mark Lewis, vice president of communication and networking at Interoute.

"Skype led the VoIP revolution becoming the long-distance voice operator of choice for savvy consumers, and then the default non-telephony voice and video communications medium for both consumers and businesses," he added.

Conversely, Rick Puskar, senior vice president of global portfolio management at Siemens Enterprise Communications, claims Skype may not have taken full advantage of its popular position.

"While Skype has revolutionised the way families and friends can communicate, cheaply and easily, worldwide, it is still seen as a B2C solution and not a B2B resource.

"The consumerisation of mobile devices has had a considerable impact on the way that we communicate in and out of work. With video conferencing and video telephony driving the trend of mobile working, it is imperative for employees to have a reliable, secure and efficient service," he said.

The first people who migrated to Microsoft’s new Outlook.com cloud-based email service one year ago are being rewarded with 3GB of extra SkyDrive storage and free Skype group video.

Users who took the plunge during the first weeks the service was offered have been receiving emails notifying them of the offer.

It would appear that the offer is only being extended to those who fully migrated to Outlook.com, i.e. not those who kept a live.com or hotmail.com address.

The ‘thank you’ gifts are also time limited.

The additional SkyDrive storage will last for one year before users will either have to downsize or start paying a subscription, which starts at £6 per year for 27GB.

The Skype group calling functionality normally available only to Skype Premium customers, is available for one month, after which users will have to sign up to the £3.44 monthly subscription if they wish to keep the service.

The news comes shortly after the company announced via Twitter it was offering former MobileMe users 15GB of additional SkyDrive storage (i.e. 22GB total) after Apple announced it was reducing the free iCloud storage it had been offering on 30 September.

Outlook.com was launched on 31 July 2012 and graduated to the preview stage on 18 February 2013 before being fully rolled out as the replacement to the company’s long-standing Hotmail service, which was founded in 1996 and bought by Microsoft the following year for $400 million.

The updated service was not well received by all, however, and many consumers complained it was unwieldy and difficult to navigate – so much so that our sister site IT Pro pulled together a tutorial to help Hotmail natives get to grips with the trickier aspects of Outlook.com.

Cloud Pro was awaiting comment from Microsoft at the time of publication.

Since Microsoft's high-profile, near $50 billion deal to take over Yahoo! hit the buffers back in 2008, both companies have been in spending mood as they sought to redefine themselves somewhat. Microsoft has snapped up the likes of Skype, for instance, which barely left change from $10 billion. Yahoo!, meanwhile, appears to have gone through more than one reinvention as it looked to see where it fits in the modern world, spending a fair mount on departing management's farewell packages as well as acquiring services.

After all, to many, Yahoo! is still a name more associated with the past and present, rather than the future. Originally known for its web portal and search engine, its inability to maintain its foothold in the latter market was notable, as Google came along and swiftly changed things around. But it'd be remiss to say Yahoo! didn't have sizeable merits. Its portal does have a significant foothold, and through services such as Flickr, Yahoo! Mail and Delicious, the company has stayed busy, while some of its traditional competition has fallen away. Who else remembers Lycos and Excite?

In the years since the Microsoft deal fell apart, Yahoo! stock value has fallen, and it's been through several management changes. It needed something dramatic, a statement of intent, to assure investors and those around it that it still had ideas and purpose in the tank. And then the Tumblr deal came along.

Tumblr is arguably the last big social networking platform - perhaps with the exception of the still-in-its-relative-infancy Pinterest - that was still up for grabs. Twitter isn't for sale anytime soon, and Microsoft's investment in Facebook is as close to a takeover as we can expect there. Blogging platform Tumblr, though, has been bought up fully by Yahoo! for $1.1 billion. It's a lot of money for something that's not made very much, so what exactly is Yahoo! up to?

Marissa

The Tumblr deal has been shepherded by Marissa Mayer, who took over as CEO at Yahoo! (following many years with Google) in 2012. Her short tenure thus far has been a controversial one. She's closed down several Yahoo! services for a start, and the firm has shed many jobs in the last year. But this is the deal with which she's making her mark. It's a big, bold gamble at a time when many companies are keeping their hands in their pockets.

Tumblr, though, isn't an immediately obvious acquisition for the firm, but it may yet prove to be an inspired one. Mayer has already vowed 'not to screw it up' and as part of that, she's confirmed that Tumblr will remain independent, under its current management. Yahoo! is clearly wary of buying something of value, and then diluting it the moment it's brought in house. History is littered with big deals that have struggled as a consequence of such an approach.

So what is Yahoo! actually getting out of the deal?

Licence to print money?

In 2012, the revenues at Tumblr were reportedly $13 million, and Yahoo! has paid over what analysts originally valued the service at. Clearly, given that even conservative watchers are suggesting Yahoo! has paid a hefty premium, this was a service it was desperately keen to get its hands on. Crucially, though, it's not just got the technology here, it's also kept hold the management team. In particular, David Karp, Tumblr's founder, will stay on board as chief executive. Adding his expertise to Yahoo! is likely to have fringe benefits.

One advantage Yahoo! has is that Tumblr is starting from such a low base, though. It's always been reluctant to embrace advertising, only relaxing things slightly last year. But going forward, Yahoo! is sure to be more aggressive, giving its already impressive sales operation a whole new platform to sell onto. Yahoo! has already announced that it's expecting Tumblr to be making a financial contribution by next year. It clearly does not intent on standing still.

There's a clear risk, here. Blogging sites and advertising do tend to be a tough mix, and Tumblr's existing subscriber base of just over 100 million blogs will need to be kept on side. Furthermore, whenever huge companies acquire such services, there's generally an unease over making money out of people's personal content. Yahoo! has been exposed to such issues with Flickr in the past, and looks set to encounter them again here.

That said, those waters are possible to navigate, and there's clearly growth potential in Tumblr. The question, that time will answer, is just how much.

One direction?

There is one further question: does this mark a directional choice for Yahoo!? If the argument runs that the biggest day-to-day asset for Yahoo! is its website, which brings in hundreds of millions of visitors a month, should it be concentrating on producing its own content, and wrapping further offerings around that? Possibly, but the Tumblr purchase suggests that the technology is as much of interest to Yahoo!.

Perhaps most tellingly, by taking ownership of a major social sharing platform, Yahoo! keeps itself in the proverbial game. It guarantees itself relevancy. If future of social networking platforms centres on Facebook, Twitter, Tumblr, Pinterest and Instagram, Yahoo! has bought itself a seat at the table for at least the near to medium-term.

The challenge the firm now faces is to turn Tumblr into a business that's worth paying over a billion dollars for. In social media terms, the price tag - exorbitant thought it may seem - may yet turn out to be something of a snip. But Yahoo! has good form in turning traffic into advertising, and there's little reason to suggest it won't succeed in doing so here. Marissa Mayer has just, effectively, bet her job on it.

Malwarebytes researchers have discovered a new scam being distributed via Microsoft-owned instant messaging service Skype.

The phishing attack manifests as a message from a Skype contact, and claims the user will be able to get a free upgrade to Skype Premium by following a link contained in the message.

However, the scam steals the user's account credentials and then goes on to deliver a well-known banking Trojan onto their computer.

While Skype and other messaging services have long been a popular infection vector for cyber criminals, Adam Kujawa, a malware intelligence analyst at Malwarebytes, claims this particular attack is unusual, as it checks the validity of a victim's credentials before proceeds.

In an upcoming blog post, Kujawa explains how he created a new account in the name of Sean Connery's character from Highlander, immortal Juan Sanchez villa-lobos Ramirez, in order to expose the scam.

"If you give them fake or incorrect login details, [the scam] will not proceed. So in order to test this scam without giving up my own personal information, I decided to create a new account...with the Skype name Villa-LobosRamirez," Kujawa said.

It is only once legitimate account details have been entered that the victim is taken to a page imitating the official Skype Download page, which will then attempt to install an executable file named "SkypePremiumSetup", or something similar.

A popup screen then appears, claiming the user's lifetime premium package is being activated. However, their computer is in fact being infected with a Trojan that can steal financial and online banking details.

Additionally, the victim's Skype account will now begin proliferating the scam, with a message similar to the one that originally reeled them in.

"The reality is that while you may do everything in your power to keep your data safe and secure from cyber criminals, your friends and family might not be so prudent. With that in mind, it is important that any communication that you are not certain is coming from someone you know [is] seen as suspicious," Kujawa advises.

"The key is to always be sceptical and [take] prudent security approaches with everything you come across. By double-checking the legitimacy of a single link, you could save yourself some serious heartache," he concludes.

Microsoft has been hit with a second patent infringement lawsuit in the space of a fortnight, once again focusing on its Skype voice over IP (VoIP) offering.

The suit, which has been lodged in the Eastern District of New York district court, comes from professional patent monetisation and patent assertion outfit CopyTele Inc (CTI), although the plaintiff is its wholly owned subsidiary, Secure Web Conference Corporation.

In a statement announcing the suit, CTI's president and CEO Robert Berman, said: "With coverage on web conferencing technology across an industry that generates over $4 billion in annual revenue, these encryption patents are a prime example of the enormous, untapped potential at CTI.

"The new management team was attracted to CTI because of the tremendous value of its patents that were masked by its previous business model. We expect to launch additional assertion programs with significant revenue opportunities as we continue to mine CTI's patents, and acquire additional patent portfolios from third parties."

It is statements such as this that have, according to Forbes, led some to label CTI a patent troll a company that engages solely in filing patent suits against large companies with no other source of income.

This is largely in line with CTI's own description of activities, as stated on its website.

Berman told Forbes his company invented the technology used by Skype decades ago, adding CTI had been "in the tech development business for 30 years ... [and] only recently moved to patent monetisation as a business model."

This is the second time Microsoft has been hit with a patent infringement suit in as many weeks. On 23 April VirnetX Holding filed a case alleging the Skype software infringed six of its patents.

VirnetX won a $200 million settlement from the Redmond giant in 2010 over patents relating to private networks.

Commenting on the CTI case, Frank Jennings, tech lawyer and partner at DMH Stallard, said: "Patent infringement claims are big business in the US tech sector and there have been many criticisms of so-called patent trolls.

"There is nothing wrong in principle with buying up patents and then seeking to enforce them. After all, the patent was genuinely granted even if the inventor has then sold it. The real difficulty is twofold.

"First, it appears the process of determining whether a software patent should actually be granted is not as robust as it could be, certainly in the USA. Also, it is questionable whether software patents act as a reward for innovation in or whether they actually inhibit invention."

In April, Google hit out at the practice of patent trolling, jointly submitting comments to the US Federal Trade Commission and Department of Justice with BlackBerry, EarthLink and Red Hat on what the organisations claim is the growing harm patent assertion entities are doing to business in the US.

A Microsoft representative told IT Pro the company was not commenting on the case at this time.

Microsoft has started rolling out a preview version of its Skype video calling and messaging service to a select group of Outlook.com users in the UK.

By merging the two products, the software giant said users will be able to add their Skype contacts to their Outlook.com address book and call them back with "just a click" of the mouse.

The functionality is initially being offered to a sample of Outlook.com users in the US and UK for testing purposes, before being rolled out to all users in due course.

The software giant announced the move in a blog post yesterday, which features a step-by-step guide about how to use Skype in Outlook.com.

"With Skype coming to Outlook.com, we're bringing two of the world's largest communications services together in one place," wrote Douglas Pearce, group programme manager of connected services at Microsoft.

"We'll gradually make Skype calling available to all our Outlook.com customers as we update the experience based on your feedback," he added.

Outlook.com users selected to participate in the preview will be notified by a pop-up within their inbox, and can use their existing Skype account to take part.

To make use of the offering's video and audio call functionality, Outlook.com users will need to download a Skype web-plug in first, but this won't be necessary if they simply want to take advantage of its instant messaging capabilities.

Windows Messenger users upgraded to Skype as part of Microsoft's retirement plans for its ageing instant messaging platform can also draw on the merger to call their contacts using a web browser or Skype client, the blog post confirmed.

"As with any new experience we build, we'll be listening to feedback from the community and welcome your comments and ideas," added Pearce.

"When the Skype preview arrives in your Outlook.com inbox, we hope you try it out and let us know what you think."

The appearance of Skype is the latest enhancement Microsoft has made to Outlook.com, since ushering it in as a replacement for Hotmail earlier this year.

The switchover has hardly been plain sailing for the firm, with many users complaining about Outlook.com's new Windows 8-like interface and how difficult the new webmail service is to navigate.

Read our Outlook.com tutorial here.

Microsoft has announced that it will begin migrating Windows Live Messenger users over to Skype from 8 April, after initially suggesting the move would happen in mid-March.

The firm made the announcement on its Skype blog post and claimed the process will "take a few weeks to complete".

"We'll start the upgrades with our English language clients, and finish up with Brazilian Portuguese on April 30 or later," noted Parri Munsell, director of marketing integration for Skype.

The Windows Messenger service was launched in 1999 and was one of the dominant instant messaging services in the early 00s. However, the service has failed to compete with products such as Skype and Whatsapp, which are available on a variety of platforms.

With Microsoft purchasing Skype for $8.5 billion in 2010, it was only a matter of time until the Messenger service was going to be retired. Skype currently has 280 million users worldwide and one of the key features is the ability to communicate cross-platform as it is available on the Mac, iOS, Windows Phone, Android and will be launched on the Blackberry 10 OS in the near future.

Microsoft is keen to highlight the benefits the switch to Skype will bring. These will include the ability to:

• Save instant message conversation history
• Edit and remove instant messages
• Share files and contact information
• Initiate video calls and message Facebook friends
• Carry out group video calling

Telecoms research firm TeleGeography's annual state of the market report has shown that voice over IP (VoIP) technology has become the method of choice for making international voice calls.

In 2011, total international voice traffic grew 9 per cent. However, when broken down by type of technology, traditional phone-based traffic grew 3 per cent, to 317 billion minutes, while VoIP traffic grew 25 per cent, to 150 billion minutes.

This trend towards cloud-based communication was even starker in 2012, with TeleGeography estimating global traffic grew 5 per cent to 490 billion minutes, 34 per cent of which were transported as VoIP.

"While market demand for cross-border communications has not declined, hundreds of millions of consumers have discovered that they can communicate without the service of a telco," said TeleGeography.

"The share of international traffic routed via computer-to-computer VoIP services has skyrocketed. Cross-border traffic route via Skype, by far the largest provider of over-the-top' (OTT) communications service, is projected to grow by an astonishing 51 billion minutes in 2012," it added.

TeleGeography also said, while Skype is "long past its start-up phase, its traffic growth remains astonishing", estimating its international traffic to have grown by 44 per cent (51 billion minutes) in 2012. This is more than twice the volume growth achieved by all the phone companies in the world combined.

The organisation said: "Not all of Skype's traffic represents a loss for telcos. Over 40 per cent of Skype's traffic is now video, and it is likely that a meaningful share of this is new' traffic, rather than a direct replacement for a telephone call.

"However, given their enormous traffic volume, it is difficult not to conclude that at least some of Skype's growth is coming at the expense of traditional carriers. If all of Skype's on-net traffic had been routed via traditional telcos, global cross-border telephone traffic would have increased 14 per cent in 2011 and 13 per cent in 2012 in line with growth rates of a decade ago."

Microsoft has been urged to clarify how often information from Skype is shared with government agencies when they make requests.

Privacy advocates have issued an open letter to the president of Skype, a chief privacy officer at Microsoft and also the firm's general counsel.

One of the main requests is for Microsoft to release regular transparency reports, which other firms such as Google and Twitter already provide.

In the proposed transparency reports, Microsoft is asked to declare the number of governments that have requested data from Skype, the type of data which has been requested and to provide a breakdown of requests that were complied with or rejected.

The letter also wants details about all user data Microsoft and Skype currently collects and its retention policies.

Currently, Microsoft provides limited information to users about how exactly data from Skype is used in its privacy policy.

The document does state that Skype, its local partners or any operators facilitating the transfer of communication may pass on personal data, communications content and/or traffic data to relevant authorities if they request it.

"Skype will provide reasonable assistance and information to fulfil this request and you hereby consent to such disclosure," the privacy policy states.

In terms of the storage of information, the policy notes that IMs, voicemail, and video message content are stored to help synchronise messages and allow users to view their history.

"Depending on the message type, messages are generally stored by Skype for a maximum of between 30 and 90 days unless otherwise permitted or required by law. This storage facilitates delivery of messages when a user is offline and to help sync messages between user devices," the policy added.

Microsoft has acknowledged that it is looking into the request, but it remains to be seen whether any such reports are forthcoming.

"We are reviewing the letter. Microsoft has an ongoing commitment to collaborate with advocates, industry partners and governments worldwide to develop solutions and promote effective public policies that help protect people's online safety and privacy," a Microsoft spokesperson said in a statement.

Ironically, Microsoft is trying to promote itself as pro-privacy. On its Bing privacy page, Microsoft takes aim squarely at Google for not respecting the privacy of individuals and encourages people to use its search engine instead.

Microsoft is to start winding down its Windows Messenger service from 15 March, but the network will remain available to users in some form for the next 12 months.

On 8 January, The Next Web reprinted an email sent from Microsoft to Messenger users explaining they would be migrated over to Skype, which was acquired by the Redmond giant in 2011.

The service is understood to have more than 100 million users.

"On 15th March 2013 we are retiring the existing Messenger service globally...and bringing the great features of Messenger and Skype together," the email stated.

"Update to Skype and sign in using a Microsoft Account (same as your Messenger ID) and all your Messenger contacts will be at your fingertips."

Microsoft's move towards a consolidated communication service is a necessary development

However, Ars Technica has since revealed that 15 March is just the start of the retirement process, not a definite end date for the service.

On 15 March, the Messenger client program will cease to connect to the Messenger network. Anyone trying to log in via the client will be asked to install Skype.

In October this year, Microsoft will turn off support for third-party clients using the open XMPP protocol introduced in December 2011, which includes Digsby, Adium and Pidgin.

However, the Messenger network will function until March 2014, meaning the current Windows Phone and Xbox Messenger clients will continue to work for another 16 months.

What is not yet clear is how this gradual switchover will affect the Messenger client that comes bundled with Windows 8, a prominent feature of the Modern UI default Start screen.

Randy Roberts, VP of mobility products at Siemens Enterprise Communications, said he was not surprised Microsoft had decided to retire its 14-year-old messaging product.

"We live in a world where being contacted via social media, email, IM, SMS and phone calls all in the same day is common place," he said.

"Microsoft's move towards a consolidated communication service is a necessary development to try and keep a population that is constantly on the move connected," Roberts added.

Orange has launched a global free calling and texting application, putting the firm in direct competition with services such as Skype, WhatsApp and Viber.

Telecom operators around the globe have suffered as free calling and texting services have proliferated over the past few years.

The apps allow users to communicate without using their voice or text allotments, leading some operators like KPN to complain about the hit to their bottom line.

As a result, market watchers are predicting that many operators may decide to turn their backs on voice services and concentrate more on data instead.

Giles Corbett, who developed the application called 'Libon' for Orange, said telecom operators needed to come up with equivalent services.

"The situation is really simple - either you deliver the most compelling service or your users switch to something else. What's the alternative? We want to be in there," he said in an interview.

The application can be used by any iPhone user for free, while the company charges for some premium features like transcripts of voicemail or email copies of voicemails.

Libon will be available for smartphones using Google's Android software in the first quarter of 2013.

Telefonica also launched a similar app, called Tu Me, in May, while Deutsche Telekom has one known as Bobsled.

With other European operators, Orange has also been working on a new technology known as rich communications suite (RCS), which is supposed to update traditional mobile calls by adding chat functions, live video and file sharing across all devices.

The telecoms industry association GSMA has been working on standardizing RCS for use across all telecom operators and all handsets.

Orange, Vodafone, Deutsche Telekom, AT&T and China Mobile are working on deploying RCS to their customers.

Orange said it was preparing a launch of RCS, which has been branded 'Joyn' by operators to give it a more consumer-friendly moniker, in June 2013.

Shrinking margins on calls and text messages will prompt mobile operators to turn their backs on voice services and concentrate on mobile data instead.

This is the view put forward by Andreas Bernstrm, chief executive of mobile VoIP service provider Rebtel, who told IT Pro the days when operators could make 3,000 per cent margin on a phone call are well and truly gone.

"There is lots more competition and the margins [operators] used to make on messaging and voice are just not there," he said.

I think we're going to see a faster switch to data-based business models from now on.

"At the same time, the demand for mobile data is doubling every year and they need to build out their infrastructure [to take advantage] of that."

Bernstrm said operators are already responding to this trend, but claims we can expect to see them moving out of the voice and minutes space faster than before.

"They've been holding on with gritted teeth...but I think we're going to see a faster switch to data-based business models [from them now]...and in the long-term that should prove to be a good business move for them."

Rebtel allows end users to make low cost international calls using their smartphones and PCs, and claims to be the world's second largest mobile VoIP provider after Skype.

The firm's customers can also make free mobile calls to other Rebtel users.

Bernstrm said the company's services are becoming increasingly popular with business users, particularly SMBs and start-ups, because of how cheap it is to use.

"We're considerably cheaper than Skype...and their mobile solution is a little clunkier [than Rebtel's], because it was built for PCs and then transferred to mobiles," he said.

"We can use telephone numbers and names, which is what people have stored in their [mobile] phonebooks, [whereas] Skype uses a buddy list. If I want to get in touch with someone, I need to know what their Skype ID is and that can hold [communications] up."

Bernstrm has some sympathy for its arch-rival, following its recent security scare, which prompted Skype to suspend its password reset function over concerns it could be used to by hackers to hijack users' accounts.

"We are all digital companies that are storing bits of data that can be very personal in nature...Skype is enormous, so there's always going to be a lot of interest [in hacking it]," he said.

"We encrypt our data...but we also try to hold very little information about our customers.

So, if we were hacked, there's a limit to the amount of damage that could be done," he added.

Skype has suspended its password reset procedures following the discovery of a flaw that could let hackers access an account by guessing a user's email address.

To take advantage of the flaw, a hacker would simply need to create a new account using the victim's email address and request a new password.

The password reset token is then sent to the hacker, via the Skype client, allowing them to take control of the victim's original username and account.

The security hole could be used to lock people out of their accounts, access their chat logs and use up any paid-for credits they may have.

According to a report by The Next Web, the problem was flagged to Microsoft-owned Skype by Russian security researchers two months ago.

The firm acknowledged the issue in a blog post earlier today, adding that it was working on a fix.

"As a precautionary step, we have temporarily disabled password reset as we continue to investigate the issue further," the blog post stated.

"We apologise for the inconvenience but user experience and safety is our first priority."

It is thought, before the company stepped in, the only way users could protect themselves against the problem was by using a separate, hard-to-guess email address for their Skype accounts.

In a follow up statement to IT Pro, Skype claimed only a small number of users had been affected by the issue.

"This issue affected some users where multiple Skype accounts were registered to the same email address. We suspended the password reset feature temporarily this morning as a precaution and have made updates to the password reset process today," it said.

"We are reaching out to a small number of users who may have been impacted to assist as necessary...and we apologise for the inconvenience."

Skype has unveiled a new service designed to help small businesses make corporate connections both locally and acround the world.

The online collaboration platform, dubbed Skype in the Workspace (SITW), has been in private beta testing for around three months, but has now been launched as a public beta.

Head of SMB marketing at Skype, Ural Cebeci, told IT Pro while people may be familiar with Skype's VOIP service at a personal level, such as communicating with friends and family abroad, there are also millions of small businesses using it.

"[Businesses are increasingly shifting online] and as part of that shift, they are replacing the tools they already have with online tools or cloud-based tools. For example Skype is replacing landline phones and that delivers cost savings," he added.

SITW is modelled on a similar service, Skype in the Classroom [SITC], which was launched a year and a half ago.

"We got some really good [results from SITC], showing how schools are using it to share class plans and, in some cases, to actually attend each other's classes. From that idea we started thinking Could we do something similar for small businesses and provide that platform to make their Skype experience much richer?'," Cebeci said.

He explained that SITW allows SMBs not only to interconnect with their customers and their partners, but to form business networks as well.

After making an initial connection via SITW, SMBs are encouraged to take the discussion onto the main Skype client using its instant messaging, and conference and video calling capabilities.

"This is really an extension of what we already do, not a departure from it. The platform provides a means of finding other people who have a similar interest and making a connection [with them], but everything else, the core communication happens within the Skype client," added Cebeci.

Those wishing to access the service can sign up via the Skype in the Workspace website using their existing Skype or LinkedIn accounts, and it is also available to new users.

Microsoft looks ready to retire its long-standing IM application Windows Live Messenger in favour Skype, the VoIP client it bought two years ago for $8.5 billion.

Live Messenger with be integrated in Skype before being withdrawn as a separate service, according to reports.

Sources told the Verge website that the rumours may be confirmed as early as next week. IT Pro contacted Microsoft for comment but at the time of writing it had not responded.

The latest version of Skype 6.0 for Windows and Mac allows users with Microsoft or Facebook IDs to log into their accounts. For the past six months or so, Microsoft has also been moving users over to its Messenger back-end - now around 80 per cent of messages now being sent through Skype.

The rumours come as Virgin Media launched its Skype alternative, dubbed SmartCall. The app will allow Virgin Media customers to make free, unlimited calls with their smartphones over a Wi-Fi connection.

"SmartCall will stretch the home telephone cord all the way to wherever you might be, whether in a coffee shop in Cornwall or on a beach in Bali," said Graeme Oxby, executive director of mobile and home phone at Virgin Media.

The company said that the only equipment users need is a Virgin Media home phone, a smartphone and a Wi-Fi connection. As standard, Virgin Media plans include unlimited free weekend calls to UK landlines and Virgin Mobiles and the app will automatically identify whether a call is included in the user's home phone talk plan.

The service will be available to hand-picked customers over the next few weeks and will launch fully in early 2013.

Skype users are being targeted by a worm that downloads malware to their PCs, and may even demand money to regain use of their machines.

The malware Trojan allows hackers to take control of infected computers and use them as part of botnets, but security researchers have warned that the Trojan can also download "ransomware" to infected PCs.

Affected users risk being locked out of their computers, and forced to hand over money in order to regain access to their data.

The Skype worm spreads by convincing users to click on messages with a link to the malware. The link usually refers to a user's new profile picture, with text such as "lol is this your new profile pic?".

According to security researchers at security vendor Sophos, the link then downloads a zip file, which contains a Trojan. The Trojan allows hackers to control the infected PC remotely over HTTP. The malware, according to Sophos' Graham Cluley, is a version of the Dorkbot worm.

The worm has been spreading for some time via other social networks including Twitter and Facebook, and could also spread via USB sticks, Cluley warned. But Skype users might be less wary of clicking on links than users of services such as Facebook, he suggested.

"We are aware of this malicious activity and are working quickly to mitigate its impact," the company said in a statement. "We strongly recommend upgrading to the newest Skype version and applying updated security features on your computer. Additionally, following links - even when from your contacts - that look strange or are unexpected is not advisable." Skype has also issued more detailed security advice to its users.

So far, only Windows PC users appear to have been targeted by the attack.

Forty per cent of UK consumers regularly ignore notifications about software updates, while a quarter claim they do not see the benefit in upgrading their systems.

The results were announced as part of International Technology Upgrade Week, which was set up to highlight the importance of regularly updating devices.

The event counts Skype, Symantec and TomTom as sponsors.

More than 350,000 people from the UK were invited to take part in the survey, which was carried out on behalf of the event's organisers by YouGov.

Half of the UK participants said they needed to see an upgrade prompt between two and five times before acting on it, while a quarter claimed they did not know how to check for updates.

The top reasons given by respondents for updating their software include keeping computers safe from hackers and preventing system crashes.

Meanwhile, consumers said they often put off software upgrades because of security fears,and the amount of time they take to do.

Steve Watts, sales director of two-factor authentication vendor SecurEnvoy, said the survey highlights the need to educate users about how their devices actually work.

"As we move to mass market PC ownership, it becomes clear that the traditional and security aware users of a computer are going to give way to someone that does not understand how their PC actually functions [or] how to update it," said Watts.

"We, as an industry, have to develop easy-to-use [systems] that [are as] foolproof as possible," he added.

It's a common misconception that the majority of Microsoft's revenue and profits comes from its operating system business. While Windows has indeed supplied a significant number of billions to the firm's bottom line over the years, it is actually the division based around Microsoft Office that is the biggest.

If you dig back to projections circling a decade or so ago, it was Office that was supposed to be vulnerable under threat from a raft of alternatives.

Take the results for the second quarter of 2012, for example. The Windows and Windows Live division generated $4.74 billion (3.02 billion) of revenue and $2.85 billion (1.8 billion) of income. The business division, which includes Office, was responsible for $6.28 billion (4 billion) of revenue and $4.15 billion (2.64 billion) of income.

If you dig back to projections circling a decade or so ago, it was Office that was supposed to be vulnerable under threat from a raft of alternatives, both paid-for and free. Furthermore, cloud-based products were also supposed to be contributing to the downfall of Office.

And yet the business division within Microsoft not only resisted many of those threats, but continues to grow. And it's Office 2010 and, to a lesser extent, Office 365 that has been fuelling this growth. Small wonder, then, that Office 2013 is seen as such a vital product in the future of Microsoft, one that the firm has made available to try free of charge in Consumer Preview form.

It's a pretty radical change that Microsoft is pressing ahead with. A much cleaner interface, the integration of touch control, and the clear move towards working with the upcoming Windows 8, with its Metro interface seeping into some areas of Office, are amongst the headline changes.

Plans

Those improvements hint at the firm's plans for the future of Office. Working hand in hand with its plans for Windows 8, Microsoft is targeting its new Office suite towards the portable market. Granted, rumours that an iPad version of Office would be coming have proven unfounded for the time being - a November launch had been mooted, but nothing has materialised. Nonetheless, Microsoft is adapting its key tools to work on the movie and adapting the interfaces to cope with that.

Furthermore, Office 2013 sees Microsoft, more than ever, pushing a cloud-based way of working. Enterprise and corporate clients have been the mainstay of the Office business, and this is where the focus of the software remains. Cloud syncing is a default option now, and Microsoft will be looking to push the collaborative features this brings with it. It's a smart move, too. When Google first introduced its online office tools, there was a fear Microsoft was being beaten to the punch.

Microsoft is trying to put together a package of materials that its rivals can't easily match and that businesses actively need.

However, Google's product line has never really caught on in the way some predicted, and Microsoft has worked hard to cement the trust of its large and loyal business base. The tone of Microsoft's formal Office 2013 announcement firmly reflects that. Furthermore, Microsoft has also revealed that it is beefing up its subscription service, Office 365. This is arguably the long-term future of the Office brand. Tying in Skype and SkyDrive storage, Microsoft is trying to put together a package of materials that its rivals can't easily match and that businesses actively need to some degree.

Office 2013

In terms of Office 2013 specifically, the risk, of course, is tying it too closely to Windows 8. While one doesn't intrinsically require the other, Microsoft is heavily gambling on the direction it is taking with Windows 8, and some of its changes to Office are very much in line with that. Microsoft chief Steve Ballmer has said as much himself.

"The new, modern Office will deliver unparalleled productivity and flexibility for both consumers and business customers. It is a cloud service and will fully light-up when paired with Windows 8," he boasted.

Evidence of the intention to intertwine the two product lines where possible is the confirmation that the firm is bringing out two specific Windows 8-style applications for Office, with its OneNote and Lync tools. Furthermore, Microsoft has announced versions of the software that work with the upcoming range of Windows RT-devices, such as the loudly-announced Microsoft Surface tablet computers.

Yammer and Skype

Microsoft is also starting to make use of some of its latest purchases. Keen to go beyond basic collaboration tools in its Office software, Microsoft recently bought business social networking service Yammer.

One purchase that's going to be more integral and more comfortably included is Skype.

Yammer is used by a growing number of firms to as a corporate information intranet service with social functions. It is too early to see Yammer fully integrated into Office in the way that Microsoft will ultimately want, but it's certainly coming. For now, Yammer is being wrapped into the Office 2013 launch as a further weapon in the Microsoft arsenal.

One purchase that's going to be more integral and more comfortably included is Skype. Microsoft paid a lot of money for the VoIP service last year, after previous owners had struggled to comfortably make the most of it. Office 2013, however, is where Microsoft clearly intends to get value for its investment.

Now, Office will come with Skype integrated, and a package that gives users 60 worldwide minutes to use every month. The firm will presumably look to sell top-ups to this package directly from within the application.

Cement

Ultimately, the challenge that Microsoft faces with Office 2013 isn't necessarily to grow the business but to cement it. It is laying down lots of bets with its approach to Windows 8, and it can afford to do that because the business division has been such a reliable performer for the firm.

Granted, the core functionality of none of the individual programs within the suite is likely to be massively different this time around, as you'd hope and expect. But it's very much a case of Microsoft needing to keep its audience interested, of needing to react to different ways of working, and ultimately, of needing to protect the biggest part of its company.

Office 2013 is a mix of the robustness and reliability of old, with enough features to keep the licence money pouring in, in theory. Office 365 builds on that. Microsoft will thus hope that between them both, its business division can continue its extraordinary run of success.

EU regulators have given the green light to Microsoft's $8.5 billion acquisition of VoIP firm Skype.

The European Commission said that its investigation of the takeover showed that the firms' activities mainly overlapped for video communications, where Microsoft is active through its Windows Live Messenger.

"However, the Commission considers that there are no competition concerns in this growing market where numerous players, including Google, are present," it said in a statement.

"For enterprise communications, the investigation confirmed that Skype has a limited market presence for these products and does not compete directly with Microsoft's enterprise communication product Lync, which is used mostly by large enterprises."

The deal is expected to lead to new customers for Microsoft's Windows and Office software.

The US Federal Trade Commission cleared the deal in June.

Software giant Microsoft announced plans to acquire Skype back in May last year.

"Together we will create the future of real-time communications so people can easily stay connected to family, friends, clients and colleagues anywhere in the world," said Steve Ballmer, Microsoft's chief executive (CEO).

Tony Bates, Skype's CEO, is to look after the Skype division within Microsoft. He will report directly to Ballmer.

"Microsoft and Skype share the vision of bringing software innovation and products to our customers," he said.

"Together, we will be able to accelerate Skype's plans to extend our global community and introduce new ways for everyone to communicate and collaborate."

Recently acquired Skype has made an acquisition of its own by purchasing GroupMe the mobile app creator which allows users to group message.

Skype is hoping to diversify its offerings from voice and video communications, moving into the text/instant messaging space.

GroupMe, a New York-based organisation founded in 2010, was recently the recipient of the Breakout Award' at the South by Southwest Interactive awards.

With a shared vision - an ambitious one - we decided our efforts to own real-time communications and the real life network could be best executed as one company.

The app works on iPhone, Android, BlackBerry and, following an announcement last month, the Microsoft-owned Windows Phone 7 platform too. Skype was recently bought by Microsoft for $8.5 billion.

"Both companies are focused on changing the way the world communicates, and helping people stay in touch with the people they really know," a blog from the GroupMe team read.

"With a shared vision - an ambitious one - we decided our efforts to own real-time communications and the real life network could be best executed as one company."

GroupMe will remain in New York with the same team working on the same app, according to the blog.

"Skype and GroupMe have a shared vision of creating applications and experiences that are the daily communications choice for a billion people. We will continue to seek the top talent and technology to make that vision a reality," said Tony Bates, Skype's chief executive (CEO).

"The GroupMe team has created an incredibly sticky group messaging experience that works across mobile devices and platforms, making this a perfect addition to the voice, video and text products in the Skype family."

Diversification in the comms space is becoming increasingly important, particularly for social networks, Gartner Charlotte Patrick Charlotte Patrick recently told IT Pro.

"There appears to be a trend for comms to become an important part and any social network needs to expand their comms side," Patrick said.

Facebook recently announced a partnership with Skype to provide video calling functionality.

On Thursday afternoon, scores of Twitter denizens went ape when the News of the World announced its final edition would be this Sunday's rag.

They weren't particularly furious about the end of NOTW, more about a host of journalists losing their jobs thanks to the paper's chief executive keeping hers.

But there were other reasons to be cheerless this week, as some FOI requests revealed hundreds of police employees had been found in breach of the Data Protection Act.

Over 900 police officers and staff in the UK were subject to internal disciplinary procedures thanks to DPA breaches, whilst 98 were given the chop for their offences.

So it isn't just journalists (IT Pro not included of course!) who've been spying on you

Roaming in white spaces

So called "white spaces" don't signal some kind of return to segregation. They in fact offer a chance for truly remote locations to get half decent broadband something Ofcom recognised this week.

BT and a promising little start-up called Neul have both been pushing the case hard for exploitation of white spaces, so super rural areas can get connections. Imagine the day when we can catch up on the latest episode of Antiques Roadshow via iPlayer from our countryside mansion homes. Spiffing.

What's more, it might not even be that expensive to view web video when on holiday, thanks to European Commission proposals. If the EC gets its way, we'll soon have cheaper data costs and won't need to remortgage our homes just to download the latest Angry Birds when backpacking around the continent. Even Skyping on Facebook whilst abroad might not cost you an arm and a leg

Humans beat computers

The entire human race should also thank ARM this week, after it effectively proved the human brain is more powerful than even the most high-powered machine.

A "massive computer" using one million ARM processors, to be used in a project to mimic the brain, will still represent only one per cent of the brain's capacity. No doubt many of you have stopped building your panic rooms in preparation for an impending man vs. machine, Terminator-esque war, right?

Of course, it may say more about ARM chips than human superiority you decide.

Skype has unveiled the latest version of its Android app, which will enable users to make 1-to-1 video calls to fellow Skype contacts.

The functionality builds on what's already available for those using the iPhone and Mac and Windows PCs, extending it out to a wider audience. Earlier this week, Google's Andy Rubin suggested the company experiences 500,000 new Android phone activations each day.

The app is free to download and can make use of both 3G and Wi-Fi connectivity. On top of this the app allows both local and international calls and texts to landlines and mobiles using Skype's own rates.

The app interface has been given a "complete redesign" according to the developers, including a new main menu and screens that enable editing of your Skype profile, complete with quick-change mood and status settings.

Users can now also check their Skype Credit balance directly in the app through a handy menu.

"We are committed to bring Skype Video Calling to as many platforms as possible and are delighted to deliver on this with our new updated Skype for Android app," said Neil Stevens, vice president and general manager for product and marketing at Skype.

The video calling functionality over Skype will be supported by Android-based handsets including the HTC Desire S, Sony Ericsson Xperia Neo, Sony Ericsson Xperia Pro and the Google Nexus S.

As ever, the world of IT just keeps on turning and turning, often so fast we find it hard to keep up with what's been going on.

Just in cased you missed anything, here's our quick recap of the week that was in IT.

Microsoft was given the US go ahead to buy VoIP firm Skype amid reports the latter had gotten rid of some of its execs before the acquisition progressed.

Ofcom confirmed mobile network operators will soon be able to buy and sell spectrum they either need or don't use anymore. Presumably they will be a better way of trading this kind of tech than eBay?

EU Justice Commissioner Viviane Reding outlined plans which may result in UK businesses having to confess straight away if they experience a data breach. Good thing, we say, as too many firms have tried to swept such acts under the carpet. We appreciate the embarrassment factor, but will somebody please think about the customers?

Talking of embarrassment, Apple might have been left a little red faced after one of its execs decided to leave the company as it neared the launch of iCloud. John Herbold, a senior product manager for the new launch, has waved goodbye to Jobs et al and hello to HealthTeacher. Instead of talking tech, he'll now be telling kids how to make lifestyle changes to ensure their continued wellbeing.

On the subject of Apple, we'd like to wish the iPhone 4 a very Happy Birthday. The shiny little gadget turns the ripe old age of one today. We look back on the year gone by to see what all the fuss was about.

Thanks for reading and have a great weekend from all at IT Pro.

Skype has let go of a number of leading executives in an attempt to save money before being fully integrated into Microsoft.

Bloomberg has reported the four vice presidents, two executives, the chief marketing officer and head of human resources would require a smaller payout if their employment was terminated before the Microsoft deal went through.

The acquisition announced in May will see Microsoft pay $8.5 billion (5.25 billion) for the company, which has been facing problems of its own thanks to two incidents of Skype going down in the past few weeks.

Although not finalised, the deal has won approval from the US Federal Trade Commission and will now need to pass EU competition guidelines.

Payouts for members of staff let go in the process tend to be based on the cost of the deal. This means sacking them before Skype becomes officially worth $8.5 billion saves cash.

Despite these other high flyers leaving, the chief executive, Tony Bates, is set to stay on and head up the new Skype division within Microsoft - as confirmed by Steve Ballmer after the deal was announced.

Brian O'Shaughnessy, a spokesman from Skype, confirmed to Bloomberg: "As part of a recent internal shift, Skype has made some management changes."

IT Pro contacted Skype for comment and received the following statement in response: "Skype, like any other pragmatic organisation, constantly assesses its team structure to deliver its users the best products. As part of a recent internal shift Skype has made some management changes"

US antitrust officials have given Microsoft their blessing to close its acquisition of VoIP firm Skype.

The green light appeared in the form of an early termination notice on the Federal Trade Commission's website.

Microsoft announced in May it was buying Skype for $8.5 billion, its biggest-ever acquisition, placing a rich bet on mobile and the Internet to try and best rivals such as Google.

Microsoft's interest in the money-losing, but popular service highlights a need to gain new customers for its Windows and Office software. Skype has 145 million users on average each month and has gained favor among small businesses.

"Skype is a phenomenal service that is loved by millions of people around the world. Together we will create the future of real-time communications so people can easily stay connected to family, friends, clients and colleagues anywhere in the world," Microsoft's chief executive Steve Ballmer said at the time.

Moving forward, Skype will form a new business unit within the software giant, headed up by the VoIP form's former chief executive Tony Bates.

"Microsoft and Skype share the vision of bringing software innovation and products to our customers. Together, we will be able to accelerate Skype's plans to extend our global community and introduce new ways for everyone to communicate and collaborate," he said.

Ballmer added: "Tony Bates has a great track record as a leader and will strengthen the Microsoft management team.

"I'm looking forward to Skype's talented global workforce bringing its insights, ideas and experience to Microsoft."

Skype has yet again gone down, with little explanation being offered as to why.

Users are reporting issues connecting to the internet phone service, with those affected experiencing problems with calling and messaging contacts.

The Skype Heartbeat website, which lets users know what problems are occurring, has admitted to some issues but not revealed what has caused them.

Skype's "blogger-in-chief," Peter Parkes, merely wrote: "A small number of you may have problems signing in to Skype. We're investigating the cause, and hope to have more details to share soon."

This is the second time Skype has broken in just two weeks, with customers facing similar issues towards the end of May.

IT PRO contacted Skype's press office to try and find out more details, but it had not returned our request at the time of publication.

The ongoing problems with the service come at a time of big change for the European company. At the beginning of May, Skype was bought for $8.5 billion by software behemoth Microsoft.

The deal is yet to close so Skype's chief executive, Tony Bates, must be hoping these glitches don't put off his buyers.