News

Skype for Business Gets New Reporting Tools

• By Kurt Mackie
• 01/13/2016

Skype for Business Online will be receiving an injection of new analytics and reporting capabilities thanks to the acquisition of software made by Event Zero.

Event Zero is an Underwood, Australia-based maker of software tools for Skype for Business, with a focus on operations reporting. Microsoft announced the purchase today of Event Zero's "technology assets underlying the UC Commander product suite." UC Commander is described by Event Zero as "the core framework" behind its other products, such as the Dossier Skype analytics tool, a Polycom phone Provisioning tool and an Operations tool.

Support for current Event Zero customers will continue after the purchase, but those customers will be moved over to a future Microsoft solution, according to Event Zero's Vice President Zig Serafin.

"Event Zero will continue to provide its award-winning support to its customers now and in the future as they migrate to Microsoft’s offering," Serafin stated in an Event Zero announcement. Serafin is also Microsoft's corporate vice president of engineering for Skype for Business, according to a Microsoft blog post today announcing the purchase.

Microsoft plans to improve its Office 365 Administration Center with Event Zero's technology. The Office 365 Admin Center currently has a Call Quality Dashboard feature, which tracks Skype for Business phone and conferencing quality issues. Microsoft is promising that Event Zero's technology addition will add "strong diagnostics and troubleshooting capabilities with even more extensive reporting and analytics for online audio, video conferencing and media streams -- all within a unified management and admin system."

Microsoft's partner community that builds monitoring and reporting tools will be getting an easier way to connect premises-based networks with Office 365 services as a consequence of the Event Zero technology acquisition.

"We plan to extend the platform to complement partner solutions and integrate their monitoring, reporting and analytics capabilities with Skype for Business Online management tools," Microsoft promised, although no details were provided.

Financial aspects, as well as any potential organizational changes associated with the deal, weren't described in the announcements. The timeline for integrating Event Zero's software technology also wasn't described.

Event Zero got started 10 years ago, with a focus on troubleshooting backend systems using complex event processing (CEP) technology. The company engineered a CEP system that works not just on short-term transactional data but can also track issues over a longer term, from 90 days to a year, according to Event Zero's Web site description. The CEP platform eventually was rebuilt to create Event Zero's Enterprise Commander solution, which is used for tracking PC use. That effort led to the creation of its current Lync and Skype monitoring solutions.