Lenovo unveiled their latest models and initiatives for the coming year at last month's Accelerate 2015 conference, in Las Vegas, Nevada - and I was there, representing Datalink Networks. 

More than 23,000 technology professionals are assembling in Chicago's McCormack Place this week for Microsoft Ignite: the software giant's biggest, baddest conference yet for the IT professional community. This conference covers the entire spectrum of Microsoft's Enterprise and education product offerings, replacing separate events for Exchange, Lync, Sharepoint and TechEd.

Workplace collaboration tools have turned out to be extremely popular with users - but with success comes new challenges: such as how to integrate all those new apps within the organization. This is especially true when it comes to user demand for consumer apps. 

This is one of the reasons Microsoft rebranded Lync as Skype for Business: combining the proven Enterprpise features of its trusted UC&C solution with the familiar UI of Skype is an all-around win-win. 

Technology is a wonderful tool - except when the tools you are using are incompatible with those of your colleagues. Moving to the Office 365 unified suite of tools in the Cloud becomes an easy decision when weighed against the other options, as discovered by Timothy Harris, vice president of global IT shared services at Mylan, a global pharmaceutical company. He first wrote about it in the Microsoft Office 365 blog, which is reprinted here with permission.

Industry pundits termed Tuesday's release of Skype for Business as a component of Office 365 a "game changer," for Microsoft's directive to host Enterprise Voice in the cloud. In our opinion, this is the most exciting development in office cloud technology. The best is yet to come.

Catch our five essential Skype for Business resources here.