Today software giant and web hosting provider Microsoft announced that it had purchased Skype, the popular software application that allows users to make voice calls and video chats over the Internet for free. Outside of Skype being a popular communication tool that web hosts use to communicate both internally and with customers, what does this means for Skype and Microsoft users?

Certainly some of the possible uses are easy to see. With Microsoft’s successful launch of the Kinect for the XBOX 360, which outside of its prime focus of playing video games using body movements instead of a controller, Kinect also can be used to video chat and conference between XBOX 360′s. Incorporating Skype into that paradigm means that users will now be able to use Skype from their XBOX 360 to talk to any Skype user regardless of platform.

From a business perspective Skype can be incorporated into Microsoft Outlook, allowing easy video conferencing between users who you have been emailing. Microsoft Lync is a solution that allows a business organization to chat and video chat between each other securely, certainly a tool Skype easily relates to and could be incorporated with. This is another addition to Microsoft Office 365, Microsoft’s cloud based hosted business solutions offering, including Hosted Exchange and Hosted SharePoint services, that helps drive home the importance of easy communications both at home and in the work place.

Anytime we can save a little money is good, right? In times
like these where every penny counts we all have to be conscious and frugal
where we can. Hosting providers that offer free web hosting services are often
attractive to small businesses to make their presence felt in the online
community without cost, but is it wise to cut costs on what will essentially
represent you to the most potential customers?

By itself the idea of a free web site is great, you get to display
your products and services to the World Wide Web without costing you anything.
But how can a free hosting provider live up with the same quality as a web host
that is affordable and makes a living off of keeping businesses online? The
simple truth is that it likely falls short in some areas.

Stable and reliable web hosting is likely the most important
feature of a web hosting plan if you are going to make the move of putting up a
web hosting site to represent your business. The last thing you want is to
launch your business online and go through marketing campaigns to make its
presence known to the world just in time for a network outage or web server
reboot to make your site unavailable. A tried and tested hosting provider, even
the most affordable ones, certainly has precautions built into place to avoid
this, and a service level agreement (SLA) to make sure if they fall short you
are financially as a result of documented penalties.

How you communicate with your clients is of equal
importance, and reliable email hosting is the key to your business being successful
online. Assuming you can find a free web host that also provides email
services, can they really be expected to stand up to large amounts of traffic
and the ever growing issue of SPAM protection when they do not earn any revenue
from their hosting solution? On the other hand for most web hosting companies,
email hosting is an important part of their product that they know is the key
to you and your business. As a result they have redundant delivery systems,
filtering and scheduled backups to assume your mail arrives on time and is
secure.