April 9, 2024
Skype for Business Online retirement
Skype for Business Online will be retired July 31, 2021. Skype for Business Server is not affected, but clients with hybrid configurations will need to move Skype for Business Online users to Teams by the retirement date.
How Teams impacts your business?
Microsoft Teams provides a richer set of functionality, performance, and control than what is possible through Skype for Business Online. Teams builds on the capabilities in Skype for Business Online by bringing together calling, chat, meetings, and Office 365 and third-party productivity apps in a single, intelligent hub.
This focus enables Teams to be more accessible, more intuitive, and more integrated with the people, processes, and data at the heart of your organization
As the global workforce becomes increasingly agile, data-driven, and distributed, new tools and technologies are transforming the ways we connect, share, and collaborate. Microsoft Teams extends the capabilities of Skype for Business, bringing together chat, meetings, calling, collaboration, app integration, and file storage into a single interface.
How does this help me?
Your Business
- Faster decision making and accelerated innovation
- Reduced email volume and more efficient meetings
- Better information sharing
- Integration with Office apps
- Mobility and productivity at scale
Your End Users
- Meetings start more quickly
- Improved video and sound quality
- Co-authoring in real time
- Inline message translation
- Background blur so you can work from anywhere
- Meetings recorded in the cloud
IT Users
- One integrated platform with end-to-end security and administrative controls
- A robust and highly available solution
- Improved performance with less downtime
- Supports tabs, bots, and connectors
Why should I care?
With the added feature rich functionalities, organizations will need a new set of governance. IE: user access, usage consumption, rogue apps, etc. Organizations that are currently using Skype for Business Online will not be functional after retirement and planning for this change is important for business continuity.
Plan your next step.
Microsoft offers the flexibility for customers to choose a coexistence path for Skype for Business and Teams best suited to their needs while on the journey to Teams Only. Do you want to deploy Teams with full functionality from the start, or do you want to expose select workloads to users in a phased way, expanding capabilities as user familiarity grows?
Reach out to Long View.
As a Microsoft Partner of the Year, Long View will help you design a strategic plan based upon a proven change management framework and the specific needs of your organization.
To discuss the transformational impact of Teams and provide details on offers to help you move from Skype for Business in a cost-effective manner.
