Just got out of a session on the new features for developers in Outlook 2007. I am very excited about it.
Can't wait until MS releases this - it will allow me to do things that have previously been deep level hacks in a simple and supported way. For example we can now customize the Outlook form to add a Skype section there.

Also we could add a custom task pane to Outlook both in the inspector and in the explorer windows. A Skype task-pane would let use make Skype much more obvious and accessible in the environment where you work. The custom task panes also exist in the rest of Office too.

A key finding for me in this conference is that MS is focusing very heavily on collaboration. Communication is not a primary focus but only comes into play in the collaboration context.
For business users (which is a large portion of our users) this is relevant thinking. This is without a doubt an area where we need help from 3rd party developers and ISV:s.

The Skype ActiveX components will of course help with making that kind of integration easier - but we do have a lot of work to do.