Microsoft’s Skype Meetings is Free Video Conferencing Tool for Small Businesses

Microsoft today took another step to increase its Skype Business into areas where affordability becomes a question many a times. The Redmond giant today launched Skype Meetings,  a video conferencing tool specially built to address needs for small businesses, and is offered for free. Skype does offer Business Solution, and this is a stripped down version of it.

What does Skype Meetings Offer :

• Group Calls with up to 10 people.
• PowerPoint collaboration and screen sharing.
• Personalized URL to join from any device.
• Supports Auto-cropping and Head tracking.
• Supports Windows, Android, iOS, Mac and Skype for Web.

Compare this with Skype for Business which supports 250 people in video conferencing,  business-oriented features, Office 365, Meeting Recording, Instant Messaging, and so on. It seems Microsoft wants to compete with popular video conferencing services like Google Hangout, Facebook and so on.

More in the video:

Those who are new to Skype should know that setting up Skype meeting needs the least effort. You can add participants from contacts, and invite them, and since the meeting can be attended from any of the devices, you don’t have to really wait to things done. Yes this also means that devices will need a Microsoft account, and Skype installed on their phones, tablets and PCs.

That said the offering as of now is US only, and if you have never used Office 365 till now, and want to get a feel on how the whole things works, you can give this a try.  Microsoft should be able to gain more customers for their Office 365 products, and hence is offering a lot of features that spin around the product.

Check out Skype Meetings | More at Skype Blog