Dive Brief:

• Microsoft announced Skype for Business, its most recent platform for online calls and meetings, on Monday.

• The release comes four years following Microsoft's purchase of Skype for $8.5 billion.

• The move takes Microsoft a step closer toward integrating its various communications tools.

Dive Insight:

Skype for Business lets businesses hold virtual meetings with as many as 10,000 participants on almost any device. Earlier this year, Microsoft used its workers to test it.

The global videoconferencing market rose more than 5% in the second quarter from a year earlier, according to data from IDC, prompting increased competition and consolidation. Cisco recently paid $700 million for Acano Ltd., a London-based company focusing on hardware that companies or cloud services use for videoconferences.

"What’s happening in our space is that customers are demanding more and more interaction with our workforce," said Andre Garcia, a vice president of IT at ABM Industries. "It's been a boon for both IT and our business, where we can communicate seamlessly with our teams and with our customers and my team doesn’t really need to worry about maintaining servers in house."

Skype for Business is engrained into Microsoft's Office 365.