Skype has hired David Gurle as the new General Manager and Vice President of its Skype for Business unit. He replaces Stefan Oberg, who will be leaving Skype in March 2010. David brings more than 17 years of telecommunications and collaboration technology industry experience to this role. He joined Skype on January 7, 2010 and reports to Josh Silverman, Skype’s president.

"We are very excited to add David to Skype’s management team and are confident that he can lead and direct the Skype for Business team’s next stage of development and growth" said Josh Silverman, Skype’s president. "He has years of experience and a terrific reputation for building and leading world-class teams. He also brings product vision, technology depth, and a track record of success in creating and selling real-time communications software to enterprises that will prove invaluable as we continue to develop our Skype for Business proposition"

David joins Skype from Thomson Reuters, where he served as its Global Head of Collaboration Services and Head of its largest business in Asia, the Sales & Trading Business Division. During this time, he built the team which was responsible for all the business and product development and support functions of Thomson Reuters’ Collaboration Services business and was responsible for turning Reuters Messaging into the de-facto collaboration service in used by the financial services community.

Prior to joining Thomson Reuters, he spent more than three years running Microsoft’s Real Time Communications business, a group that he founded. During this time, he oversaw the development of the company’s collaboration products including NetMeeting, Windows Messenger, Exchange IM, Exchange Conferencing Server, Live Communications Server and Office Communications Server, as well as Microsoft’s acquisition of PlaceWare. While at Microsoft, David co-authored several Internet Engineering Task Force standards for presence and instant messaging for SIP.

"Since its inception, Skype has been used by many entrepreneurs and small businesses to save money on their communications" said David Gurle. "Moving forward, our goal is to educate and attract larger organizations that can not only save money by using Skype to communicate, but also increase their organizational productivity and enhance the way they interact with customers around the globe"

Prior to Microsoft, David was Corporate Vice President, Business Alliances at VocalTec, the IP telephony pioneer, where he established and managed partnerships with a number of Tier I telecommunications service providers and hardware vendors, including Deutsche Telekom, France Telecom and Marconi. He also spent time at ETSI, France Telecom and started his career at Digital Equipment Corporation. David has also co-authored a number of books on VoIP and IP Telephony.

David graduated ESIGETEL with a Masters of Science degree in Computer Science and Telecommunications.