Skype for Business Online is retiring — Time to plan for Teams

During January you may have received an email about Microsoft’s ongoing plan for the retirement of Skype for Business. In the email, Microsoft explains that Teams has become the core communications client for Office 365 and that Skype for Business Online will retire on 31 July 2021.

Organisations which have already migrated to Teams will be relaxed and for others that date may be sufficiently distant in the future to manage. However, for a significant number of organisations using Microsoft 365, they need to begin planning their migration to Teams if they have not started already.

Microsoft Teams Collaboration

There are of course many different facets to a Teams migration project, but in this post, we will focus on the collaboration component. This component of Teams is often neglected in a migration project, as organisations focus on replacing the voice and chat components of Skype for Business. Furthermore, the collaboration features in Teams is not something offered in Skype for Business and thus is not immediately considered.

Organisations neglect the collaboration component at their peril because they will not maximise the benefit from Teams and even worse it may have a detrimental impact on the user experience. By default in Microsoft 365, any user can create a new Team, upload files, install apps and share the Team with external users. Furthermore, the Team creation will create objects in Azure Active Directory and Exchange, with no control over the naming convention. These facts should immediately raise concerns with any SharePoint admins, network administrators or compliance managers.

Microsoft Teams Migration Plan

The important thing to realise is there is no need overreact and disable collaboration functionality in Teams. This approach will be counterproductive, driving users to shadow IT services like Slack. Instead, the collaboration components should form part of a migration plan to Microsoft Teams, which includes both adoption and governance strategy. In this way, you can maximise the benefit of Microsoft Teams for both the organisation and the whole user base.