Microsoft will drop Skype for Business Online to ease the transition to Teams

Microsoft is slowly transitioning its business customers away from Skype to move over to Teams. The company will be closing Skype for Business Online on July 31, 2021. As you can tell, the change isn’t happening immediately. But new users who log on after September 1^st won’t be able to access Skype for Business Online. Instead, they’ll be redirected to Teams. Microsoft won’t be making changes to the Skype version used by consumers or the Skype Business server edition either.

"Over the last two years, we’ve worked closely with customers to refine Teams, and we now feel we’re at the point that we can confidently recommend it as an upgrade to all Skype for Business Online customers," James Skay, senior marketing manager for Skype for Business, wrote in a blog post. "Customers who have already made the move tell us that Teams not only has helped them improve collaboration generally, it has also provided a rare opportunity to rethink the way work gets done in their organizations."

Microsoft Teams is a chat-based workspace in Office 365

Microsoft's answer to Slack, which is Microsoft Teams, was announced earlier today. Microsoft Teams—the chat-based workspace in Office 365—is now generally available in 181 markets and in 19 languages. Since announcing the preview in November, more than 50,000 organizations have started using Microsoft Teams

Kirk Koenigsbauer, corporate vice president of Microsoft Office, shared what’s new in Microsoft Teams and talked about how customers are using Office 365 to collaborate and deliver great results.

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