Skype for Business Online - End of Life - July 31, 2021 (original) (raw)

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Today Microsoft announced that Skype for Business Online will be retiring on July 31, 2021. Though we didn’t know the exact date until today, we have been preparing for this for the past year and are ready to support you however we can as we work together to help you make this transition.

We knew this was coming, we have been preparing for this for the past year, now we know the official date. We hope this does not come as a shock to you as MS Teams has taken center stage for Intelligent Communication and Modern Collaboration and Microsoft as an organization is not going to support Skype for Business (SfB) online for the long term. All of our investments and feature enhancements have been in Teams and Teams will continue to receive these investments for the future.

If you are currently a SfB Online customer don’t worry MS Teams has all the features your users need to continue business continuity, Teams actually has more features and we have found the majority of our end users are more happy with the MS Teams experience over Skype.

See here for a feature comparison list of the primary features we hear from our users:

For a deeper comparison and more technical look at SfB vs Teams please read this article.

If you are surprised by this announcement or maybe not surprised but more in shock because you are not prepared, don’t worry, Microsoft is prepared to support you in your efforts to move from SfB to Teams. We have many people like myself in the field that are fully trained and ready to help you every step of the way.

Here is how to get started on the MS Teams Journey:

• MS Teams Governance
• MS Teams Security
• MS Teams Technical Site
• SfB and Teams Coexistence Modes
• Teams Voice - What is Direct Routing for MS Teams
• Cloud Video Interop for MS Teams
• How to get started with upgrading to MS Teams

For more assistance please reach out to your Microsoft account team, there are 3 roles on the account team that are specifically focused on helping our customers make this transition, if you have relationships with one of these members of your team, I would ask them first.

• MS Teams Technical Specialist
• MS Teams Customer Success Manager
• FastTrack Manager

We are giving our customers a two year runway on this and that may seem like a long time, but in reality, large organizations move slow so the time is now to get started. MS Teams can offer your end user so much value! We strongly encourage you to start planning for this and working with us now, not just because Skype is coming to end of life, but because Teams can offer your organization so much more.

Start empowering your users now by providing them with world class Intelligent Communication sooner than later.

Thanks for reading:

Co-Authored by Shelly Avery and Josh Thompson

Updated Jul 30, 2019

Version 4.0

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  WOW! Finally, a list of how Skype for Business measures up to Teams - I mean this - even though there are a few (cough)(cough) corrections that should be made (IMEO). For those of us old enough to remember, an emoji is just an overly fantastical way of presenting emoticons...I guess someone felt they were limited, boring, etc. And while some may argue that being the truth, I would counter this position by questioning the real motivation for needing the peach and/or eggplant in a work environment. As for GIF's and memes, these can also be "included" in a Skype for Business conversation. As with emoji's, I'm not sure how the use of these contributes to the bottom line of ones business operation, unless of course, you're in the business of making fun of things or making people laugh. I like laughing, but work is no joke.
  Anyway, and more importantly, I won't deny that TEAMS is one heck of a platform and, in many regards, it may have a leg up on all competition. Regardless, the fact STILL remains...Teams is farther reaching, more robust and employs a great deal more features/functions, but Microsoft has forgotten (or is in denial) that, with all of the WOW factor that Teams brings to the table, it also comes with complication and confusion in terms of its adoption - even for the big companies. In true Microsoft "wash, rinse, repeat" fashion, pushing a platform onto the subscriber before it's ready for primetime and, at the same time, ignoring the fact that MANY small businesses (we don't have deep pockets or large-scale departments to take on such shifts in the IT paradigm) who are just now getting comfortable with being able to entertain the concept of and transitioning to technology that was once only available to (afforded by) the big entities (e.g., Exchange/Outlook, SharePoint, etc.) is both concerning and laughable. You know, like that of a GIF or meme. OK, stop laughing, I'm being serious.
  For those of us who work in micro-to-small businesses, where it's not uncommon to have "teams of one" and/or use a simple product like Skype for Business to its fullest (i.e., we need nothing more than text/video chat and the occasional screen sharing situation), how on earth does everyone at Microsoft fail to recognize the ridiculousness of Teams being touted, promoted and marketed as "Skype for Business, only better"? Poppycock! While Teams employs a good number of features and functions we have come to know and enjoy in Skype for Business, the fact remains, Teams is not simply a replacement "and then some" to Skype for Business. No, no, no, it's a completely different animal. And yet, here we are, the small companies, buried under this marketing manusha, welcoming the magic of Skype for Business being up updated to Teams (the successor to Skype for Business) only to determine, after countless hours of problems and setbacks, the very (sad) reality that Teams is "no upgrade". It's a business-focus shift -- from the short-term, one-off and impromptu one-on-one relationships, towards the planned, coordinated, scheduled and collaborative one-to-many and many-to-many relationships -- relationships a vast majority of large scale, multi-regional, national and worldwide entities desire so that they might be more/better connected.
  At the end of the day, I've been doing this a VERY long time and have always appreciated the evolution and advancement of technology -- it's what drove me to establishing a career in technology. That said, I appreciate the need for such features and functions a platform like Teams has to offer. But the reality and response to the outcome and experience of those living this so-called transition/upgrade shouldn't fall on deaf ears. I implore anyone and everyone at Microsoft, specifically the Teams team, to consider all that I've laid out and consider the following:

1. Skype for Business is a lot closer to Skype than Teams (why is Skype staying put, yet Skype for Business is going buh-bye?)
2. Many of my colleagues (I'm not alone) believe this announcement is another sad day in technology
3. If Microsoft used this same "list" to disable/hide the unnecessary components of Teams (i.e., Skype for Business = Teams Lite), the small companies would breathe a sigh of relief as opposed to hoping/praying Microsoft extends (or cancels altogether) this announced deadline
   Lastly, per other Microsoft-produced resources, there still remains numerous functions within Skype for Business that are (currently) non-existent, and yet equally important, in Teams. Why not include these in your list as well (to level the playing field)?

• 
  For "Share a file with offline participants" should the X for Skype be one row up in the "Share a file in chat"?
• 
• 
  I work as a contractor for another company. As a result, I have got 2 corporate teams to manage. I chat / conference with the groups at my “employer's company” and the groups at my “contract provider's company”.
  I use Skype for one and Teams for the other. This greatly facilitates my work in both the companies.
  How will I manage teams from 2 different companies after Skype is gone?

Moreover, Skype is much more user friendly as a chat /conferencing application.
Whereas Teams has lot of other use cases over the top.
Please keep Skype alive. I don't care if it is maintained or not. But let user use it in its today's version.
There is a real biz case here.
Phasing out Skype is not a good idea folks. It is still a great chat application. You can shelve it out to another company to manage if at all it has a cost associated to keep it alive.
This is a sincere request to MS!

• 
  Any word on when anon guests will be supported? That is, like with SfB, users not requiring a 365 account or even a MSA. There has been some chatter that it might happen once Kaizala is integrated, but that may take 18 months.
• 
  Hi,
  I am curious about how this will affect teleconference licencing, the Skype for business application, and how it interacts with creating meeting entries in Outlook.
  Thank you,
• 
  Just my 2 cents... It would be beneficial to have the ability to reverse sort a conversation view so that if a user preferred the most recent entries would appear at the top rather than the bottom of the conversation view
• 
  How will this impact 3PIP phones. Currently they can connect to Teams, will this change after July 31 2021?
• 
  What happens to users with the Skype for Business Client installed on 8/1/21 will the client still work or are you forcing the use of the Teams client at that point?
• 
  Yay, James_From_Japan! I agree 100,000%...now if we can only get another 20 million people to pile on.
  S4B is way more user friendly as a chat/conf app...I've been telling people at Microsoft (posting, face-to-face conversations, etc.) for the past 2 years. One might think someone would take notice, but nope, nothing but deaf. Microsoft doesn't care that Teams (although it is getting better for the limited needs type companies) is made for BIG companies with teams of people silo'd into their own world of projects and collaboration. Little companies that ONLY need, as you say, chat/conf basics are left out in the cold - forced to create sites, doc libraries, calendars, notebooks, etc., just to be able to chat with someone about an immediate need (no historical or future needs). And this notion that every team needs its own little slice of heaven just to communicate and collaborate is utter nonsense.
  Hey Microsoft, one of the tenants we have was "forcibly migrated" to Teams. I say this because you migrated the tenant once and, per my never-ending requests, finally got tired of my complaints and re-instated S4B. Funny thing was, upon said re-instatement, I was no longer able to delay the migration to Teams. Nope, that feature magically disappeared. And then, one day, not long ago, Teams was mysteriously migrated again. Welp, guess what? Our company, with a handful of "teams of one" aren't using it. We de-activated all licenses. We keep disabling it from being installed/updated via C2R (although you keep magically re-enabling it -- we'll continue playing this game for as long as I work here). We disable it from opening/running automagically (another one of your tricks) via group policy. And when you force the other tenants we use to Teams, we won't be using it in there either. Until you make Teams viable for the little guys, we'll use something else...email, phone, txt or snail mail...or nothing at all.

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