Slashdot Mirror
Microsoft Teams is Replacing Skype for Business To Put More Pressure on Slack (theverge.com)
An anonymous reader shares a report: Microsoft Teams isn't even a year old, but it's about to replace Skype for Business. At Microsoft's Ignite conference in Orlando, Florida today, the software giant is revealing that it plans to kill off Skype for Business in favor of Microsoft Teams. Skype for Business took over from Lync, Microsoft's previous business chat app, back in 2015. Microsoft's original Teams launch made it look obvious that Skype for Business would eventually disappear, given the fact that Teams integrates most of Skype's functionality already. Microsoft says it has been building a new Skype infrastructure that has been "evolving rapidly," and it will serve as the enterprise-grade service for voice, video, and meetings in Microsoft Teams. A new Skype for Business server will be available in the second half of 2018 for customers not ready to move to Teams, but Microsoft is pushing Office 365 users will to move over to Teams as the key communications client instead of relying on Skype for Business.
Replacing a fully functional product that a company probably spent a lot of money hiring people to implement and integrate with the company network with another product just seems moronic.
If I were a buisness that used Skype, I'd be pissed off and probably change to Slack, rather than change to Microsoft Teams.
Some people encrypt by using rot-13 twice. I prefer the more secure method of using rot-1 a total of twenty six times.
Russia Releases Photos Showing US Special Ops At ISIS Positions In Syria
Russian Defense Ministry has released a statement followed by 12 photos showing how SDF forces work alongside US special forces in ISIS controlled areas without facing any resistance from ISIS. Furthermore, none of the US or Kurdish led forces even take defensive positions which indicate that they are cooperating with ISIS rather than engaging in a perverse truce. In other words, the SDF, US special forces and ISIS move among each other in the same manner as allies do.
"#US Special Operations Forces (#SOF) units enable US-backed Syrian Democratic Forces (#SDF) units to smoothly advance through the ISIS formations.
Facing no resistance of the ISIS militants, the #SDF units are advancing along the left shore of the #Euphrates towards #Deir_ez_Zor.
The aerial photos made on September 8-12 over the ISIS locations recorded a large number of American #Hummer vehicles, which are in service with the #Americaâs #SOF.
The shots clearly show the US SOF units located at strongholds that had been equipped by the ISIS terrorists. Though there is no evidence of assault, struggle or any US-led coalition airstrikes to drive out the militants.
Despite that the US strongholds being located in the ISIS areas, no screening patrol has been organized at them. This suggests that the#US_troops feel safe in terrorist controlled regions".
This demonstrates that in spite of Donald Trump's apparent wiliness to abandon the policy of aiding jihadist groups, not only has this policy not changed, but such a reality now includes full scale battlefield collusion with ISIS.
This also helps explain why in June of this year, SDF forces allowed ISIS terrorists to peacefully leave Raqqa and head towards Deir ez-Zor, a place which is now unquestionably the largest remaining ISIS stronghold in east of Libya.
But now, not only are US proxies allowing ISIS to peacefully retreat but they are visibly coalescing on the battle field. These realities also corroborate the story of SDF fighters being wounded in a Syrian led strike on known ISIS targets. As I wrote previously in The Duran, this is because SDF militants are fighting beside ISIS.
The fact of the matter is that, the Kurdish led SDF and ISIS now share the same strategic goals, in spite of apparent ideological differences. Both seek to aggressively and illegally prevent Syria from liberating her sovereignty territory and in so doing, both are challenging the territorial unity and integrity of the Syrian Arab Republic. Likewise, each group's ideology is opposed to the Arabist Constitution of Syria, seeking instead to lay the ground work for sectarian ideologies in the areas they seek to illegally annex.
Most worryingly, both militant groups are clearly collaborating and colluding with each other and with the United States, in a proxy war against Syria and the interests and safety of her allies, including Russia and Iran.
What once was only partly clear, is now as clear as the following colour photographs from the Russian Defense Ministry.
The images released by the Russian Defense Ministry encourage speculation that the US and SDF forces have some sort of "understanding" with IS terrorists operating in the region, according to Ammar Waqqaf, the director of the Gnosos think tank.
"From the footage, the Americans seem to be and the SDF seem to be quite at leisure, they are not expecting any attack any time soon," Waqqaf told RT.
"The reason why this may be the case is that there has been some sort of understandings with ISIS over there. Probably they were given some amnesty, that they are not going to be prosecuted, ⦠or they were given guarantees that they would not be gi
Blockbuster: Russian Satellite Proof, America is ISIS!
ISIS positions north of Deir Ezzor manned by US Special Forces. Photos prove America is ISIS
[ Editor's Note 2: Gordon went to the Russian ministry of defense to get the best quality photos, as they are needed to drive home two messages. One is that we have photographic proof of US advisers, Special Ops, or whatever you want to call them seeming to be able to operate inside and/or near ISIS held areas.
Or two, these ISIS held areas can sometimes be SDF people dressed up as ISIS, depending what central casting in Hollywood has called up for the extras to dress as for the day.
But there is a third questions. The Russians have obviously had these photos for days and maybe even weeks now, so why have they been hiding them at this critical stage of the war with the SDF now coming deep into traditional Arab territory in what is clearly and army of conquest now, with the US fully onboard.
With ISIS pushed out of so many areas, and so many of the killed, or "gone to Idlib", who do we see Damascus showing signs of a shortage of manpower. I watched a video of SAA troops opening an new flank on Saquir Island south of Deir Ezzor. They were using on rubber boat being pulled back with a rope to shuttle troop across a narrow water barrier.
At a minimum then needed two, with the second boat shuttling over the ammunition that is typically needed to sustain and offensive, and especially reserve ammunition to handle counter attacks where running out can be a death sentence.
The ammo boat would also usually be carrying heavy crew manned machine guns, yet I have not seen a single one in any of these crossing videos, nor have I seen any RPG men with their backpacks of triple shot loads with any of these platoons going into combat on the west side of the river.
We thank the Russian command for these photos. Please send more, and send them sooner⦠Jim W. Dean ]
Editor's note: As US and SDF forces "defeat" ISIS near Deir Ezzor, it is now revealed that US and ISIS forces attacking Syrian Army positions are in fact one in the same. As long suspected, the US is supplying equipment and arms to ISIS, is safeguarding their leaders and fighting a totally phony war while in fact running the ISIS organization. Were one to say ISIS is commanded by Donald Trump, one would not be making a misstatement of any kind. Gordon Duff
The newly released images "clearly show that US special ops are stationed at the outposts previously set up by ISIS militants."
"Despite that the US strongholds being located in the ISIS areas, no screening patrol has been organized at them," the Russian Ministry of Defense said.
Remember folks, DHS and msmash want you to believe Russians will "hack into" Slack and change your mind and make you go to the election places (which are probably filled with schoolchildren this time of year) and demand to have your vote changed to Hillary Clinton. "Hillarity" will ensue.
Comment removed based on user account deletion
...rebrand it "Microsoft Slack", and call it innovation. I guess that model doesn't work anymore, or they just don't have the cash/prestige/fear-factor to buy whatever they want anymore?
Russians are evil! Let's nuke them! Let's keep hating Russians because Russia and Russians Russiaed the Russian Election Hack!
Blockbuster: Russian Satellite Proof, America is ISIS!
ISIS positions north of Deir Ezzor manned by US Special Forces. Photos prove America is ISIS
[ Editor's Note 2: Gordon went to the Russian ministry of defense to get the best quality photos, as they are needed to drive home two messages. One is that we have photographic proof of US advisers, Special Ops, or whatever you want to call them seeming to be able to operate inside and/or near ISIS held areas.
Or two, these ISIS held areas can sometimes be SDF people dressed up as ISIS, depending what central casting in Hollywood has called up for the extras to dress as for the day.
But there is a third questions. The Russians have obviously had these photos for days and maybe even weeks now, so why have they been hiding them at this critical stage of the war with the SDF now coming deep into traditional Arab territory in what is clearly and army of conquest now, with the US fully onboard.
With ISIS pushed out of so many areas, and so many of the killed, or "gone to Idlib", who do we see Damascus showing signs of a shortage of manpower. I watched a video of SAA troops opening an new flank on Saquir Island south of Deir Ezzor. They were using on rubber boat being pulled back with a rope to shuttle troop across a narrow water barrier.
At a minimum then needed two, with the second boat shuttling over the ammunition that is typically needed to sustain and offensive, and especially reserve ammunition to handle counter attacks where running out can be a death sentence.
The ammo boat would also usually be carrying heavy crew manned machine guns, yet I have not seen a single one in any of these crossing videos, nor have I seen any RPG men with their backpacks of triple shot loads with any of these platoons going into combat on the west side of the river.
We thank the Russian command for these photos. Please send more, and send them sooner⦠Jim W. Dean]
Editor's note: As US and SDF forces "defeat" ISIS near Deir Ezzor, it is now revealed that US and ISIS forces attacking Syrian Army positions are in fact one in the same. As long suspected, the US is supplying equipment and arms to ISIS, is safeguarding their leaders and fighting a totally phony war while in fact running the ISIS organization. Were one to say ISIS is commanded by Donald Trump, one would not be making a misstatement of any kind. Gordon Duff
The newly released images "clearly show that US special ops are stationed at the outposts previously set up by ISIS militants."
"Despite that the US strongholds being located in the ISIS areas, no screening patrol has been organized at them," the Russian Ministry of Defense said.
Communicator, Lync, Skype for Business...and, now, Teams.
Do you want to build on brand recognition within Office? Because this isn't how you build brand recognition within Office.
Since Skype for Business is crap I will accept this change without even looking at the Teams product. It has been completely obvious that MS didn't intend to keep Skype going since Lync. It's biggest drawback is the same as the other Office Apps, lack of direction and finishing out features or usability issues.
Russia Releases Photos Showing US Special Ops At ISIS Positions In Syria
Russian Defense Ministry has released a statement followed by 12 photos showing how SDF forces work alongside US special forces in ISIS controlled areas without facing any resistance from ISIS. Furthermore, none of the US or Kurdish led forces even take defensive positions which indicate that they are cooperating with ISIS rather than engaging in a perverse truce. In other words, the SDF, US special forces and ISIS move among each other in the same manner as allies do.
"#US Special Operations Forces (#SOF) units enable US-backed Syrian Democratic Forces (#SDF) units to smoothly advance through the ISIS formations.
Facing no resistance of the ISIS militants, the #SDF units are advancing along the left shore of the #Euphrates towards #Deir_ez_Zor.
The aerial photos made on September 8-12 over the ISIS locations recorded a large number of American #Hummer vehicles, which are in service with the #Americaâs #SOF.
The shots clearly show the US SOF units located at strongholds that had been equipped by the ISIS terrorists. Though there is no evidence of assault, struggle or any US-led coalition airstrikes to drive out the militants.
Despite that the US strongholds being located in the ISIS areas, no screening patrol has been organized at them. This suggests that the#US_troops feel safe in terrorist controlled regions".
This demonstrates that in spite of Donald Trump's apparent wiliness to abandon the policy of aiding jihadist groups, not only has this policy not changed, but such a reality now includes full scale battlefield collusion with ISIS.
This also helps explain why in June of this year, SDF forces allowed ISIS terrorists to peacefully leave Raqqa and head towards Deir ez-Zor, a place which is now unquestionably the largest remaining ISIS stronghold in east of Libya.
But now, not only are US proxies allowing ISIS to peacefully retreat but they are visibly coalescing on the battle field. These realities also corroborate the story of SDF fighters being wounded in a Syrian led strike on known ISIS targets. As I wrote previously in The Duran, this is because SDF militants are fighting beside ISIS.
The fact of the matter is that, the Kurdish led SDF and ISIS now share the same strategic goals, in spite of apparent ideological differences. Both seek to aggressively and illegally prevent Syria from liberating her sovereignty territory and in so doing, both are challenging the territorial unity and integrity of the Syrian Arab Republic. Likewise, each group's ideology is opposed to the Arabist Constitution of Syria, seeking instead to lay the ground work for sectarian ideologies in the areas they seek to illegally annex.
Most worryingly, both militant groups are clearly collaborating and colluding with each other and with the United States, in a proxy war against Syria and the interests and safety of her allies, including Russia and Iran.
What once was only partly clear, is now as clear as the following colour photographs from the Russian Defense Ministry.
The images released by the Russian Defense Ministry encourage speculation that the US and SDF forces have some sort of "understanding" with IS terrorists operating in the region, according to Ammar Waqqaf, the director of the Gnosos think tank.
"From the footage, the Americans seem to be and the SDF seem to be quite at leisure, they are not expecting any attack any time soon," Waqqaf told RT.
"The reason why this may be the case is that there has been some sort of understandings with ISIS over there. Probably they were given some amnesty, that they are not going to be prosecuted, ⦠or they were given guarantees that they would not be gi
What is Slack and why it would be pressured by Microsoft?
I use Skype and Teams in my job and I can tell you one thing; Skype will not be missed...
We just switched the whole company to Skype Business and now they want us to switch to a different MS product? Screw that.
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Replacing a fully functional product [...] just seems moronic.
Or, as we call it here, "monday at microsoft"...
If you need a communication platform for your team that's open source, then Diaspora is surely the way to go. It's written in Ruby using Ruby on Rails, and the code is on GitHub, so it's using cutting edge technologies.
I wonder when Microsoft will figure out that changing the brand of their products every 2 years and killing off products just makes customers confused and kills any momentum they may have had previously.
To make it better, they add 15 license models making it impossible to know cost or how to pay.
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Not if you Office 365 company getting Teams thrown in for free...
Lync was pretty good. Then they replaced it with Skype - made it a little bad. Then Skype for Business; worse. Then MS Office 365 Skype for Business which is horrible. Can't wait to see what Teams will be like
Unfortunately, Slack doesn't do a lot of the core things that Skype is good at, such as video conferencing and meeting integration with Outlook (including conference rooms that have AV systems built into them).
If Microsoft can pull this off seamlessly I'll be *very* impressed, but I doubt it's going to be a seamless transition or work properly when they push it on all of their o365 users.
An office suite program is integral to the efficient functioning of just about any business. So now, predictably, Microsoft is using its newest version of Office to leverage other applications into accepting more and more of its programs. Identify what "Teams" does that "Skype for Business" doesn't (especially with respect to how much of your business will reside on Microsoft servers after the change), and that is the amount by which Microsoft has increased its hold on your company. I have no idea what those differences might be, but I have little doubt they exist.
Companies that opted for Libre Office are starting to look smarter and smarter, while those that took the easy route and "upgraded" to Win 10 and Office 365 ("All Your Cloud Are Belong To Us") are probably going to regret their choice sooner or later.
I've calculated my velocity with such exquisite precision that I have no idea where I am.
MS has this way of seeing how far they can get away with intrusive, user-unfriendly products. From XP (via WGA) to Windows 8 (tiles aka ad server) to Windows 10 (which collects more data than ever before with very limited ability to protect your private). With the MS purchase of Skype (thanks owners for selling customers out), it's no exception. One day we will get wise and tell MS where to stick it and go to linux/macos. Until we do MS will keep doing this because by continuing to use them, especially when we have choices. (even switching from Windows 10 to 7 would send a message, and yes, folks you CAN either buy windows 7 or use the windows 10 pro downgrade rights), we are saying it's okay.
"Imagination is more important than knowledge" - Einstein
Wait..
Fuck it, I'll be both at the same time, now respect me.
Even our Cisco chat tool is just XMPP underneath. It makes it easy to integrate into a host of services. IBM's "Sametime" is also in libpurple. I've used both and they're fairly good. At the minimum I can at least use my own chat client.
Remember when Microsoft bought Skype and people worried about the future of Skype as cross platform. Now Skype has been sucked in to Office365. Only Offrice365 is being extended.
Microsoft needs to make up its damn mind about this.
We support several flavors of Lync and are transitioning to Skype for Business and NOW they are going to change it again?
Skype for Bussiness on OSX is fucking trash. Unfortunately our company is locked into the O365 suite of bullshit. Slack channel specifically prohibited so we are constrained to skype and teams.
I've been using Teams for a little bit at two of my clients - and I have to say Microsoft REALLY needs to improve the efficiency of Teams before they go fully replacing Skype. As soon as I run the fat-client app whether on Windows or Mac, it's a resource suck as bad as anything I have seen. It's like a really sad, slow version of Google Wave.
Never have a philosophy which supports a lack of courage
So just new icon and change window title again?
I would say they should have named it 'Lync' again. Skype for business has been the most confusing thing to talk about, because it has *zero* to do with Skype, except in the minds of MS marketing people.
As a result you can't just say 'Skype' because people won't do the right thing, you always had to say 'Skype for Business' which is a misleading mouthful.
XML is like violence. If it doesn't solve the problem, use more.
They're not "replacing" anything. They're:
1) adding Teams functionality to Skype For Business, because SFB is a functional product and Teams is new functionality,
2) rebranding SFB as Teams, because SFB is a clunky name and everyone has hated the name since it replaced Lync, and
3) releasing a non-cloud server called Skype For Business Server, because there are large enterprises that want to host their own stuff for various legitimate reasons.
This announcement has the following impact on everyday users/IT workers:
- Current SFB users will be getting Teams functionality added to their client soon. At the same time, they will see a branding change.
- Current O365 users will get Teams (rebranded SFB) by default.
- Enterprises admins in critical industries or paranoid organizations will soon have the ability to take SFB/Teams out of the cloud and into the server room.
Slack can't touch any of these features, either because it doesn't apply or because they don't have the rest of what Microsoft offers. Only an idiot would dump this for Slack. And I say that as a daily SFB and Slack user. We probably won't be using Slack for much longer. It's already prohibitively annoying to admin for and we have already been looking for a replacement. Getting Teams for "free" with the stuff we already use (O365, SFB) is the final nail in the coffin.
MS has purchased / absorbed a competing / NIH product an later crippled / killed it? Hoping this does not become a trend.
"Win treats sysadmins better than users. Mac treats users better than sysadmins. Linux treats everyone like sysadmins."
You mean the US is the good guy?
Really?
What planet are you on.
The US isn't even invited to Syria the first place.
You are owned by Israel, your soldiers are dying for Israel and you're paying tax to send them to their death fighting for Israel.
My business uses "skype for business" and now "Teams". Lync/Skype4Business sucks really bad. Glad to see it die.
Teams is the first decent Microsoft application I've seen in decades. No doubt some version a few years from now will once again be bloated and encrusted with irrelevancies & bugs, but for now it does one or two jobs well and without surprises or obvious limitations for the domain.
We have O365 and Skype here at work and we prefer Slack to S4B in every way. In fact, we're evaluating other options for conferencing because S4B sucks when trying to operate with those who are not using S4B externally.
I fully understand why Microsoft is trying to go down this route, as evidenced by our lack of faith in their offerings; however, I am not certain it's going to do much to help them "win", especially when people are already paying for their O365 subscriptions and having to double up and use other software on top of it.
Skype for Business is a laggy, buggy, bloated pos that's a shell of its former self. Now that all gets rolled into the quite nascent and equally buggy Teams? Yikes!
If it was North Korea you would hear threats and sanctions from the US 24/7.
The fact that your media never said a word on who've been dealing with ISIS means they are owned by the same people.
Putin Reveals ISIS Funded by 40 Countries, Including G20 Members
BREAKING: Putin Reveals 40 Countries That Are Funding ISIS At The G20 Summit
I fully understand why Microsoft is trying to go down this route
Yes, so do I. It is the latest of MS saying "Us Too!!!!!"
Agent K: A *person* is smart. People are dumb, stupid, panicky animals, and you know it.
microsoft has a long history of this. I remember netmeeting. It was great and it worked great. They replaced it with something I have forgotten and in a couple of weeks everyone stop using it as it did not work. If they had built up netmeeting they might have never needed to buy Skype. Looks like they are repeating the same pattern decades later.
Have you ever used Skype for Business? It's a shitty app, and won't be missed in the slightest. If they just shut the entire fucking thing down today, I'd be thrilled.
It can't keep conversations synced across devices, if you've got multiple instances open (For example on your PC, a remote PC and your phone) it will randomly send a conversation to a device that you're not using and you won't see it until later, it freezes for about 30 seconds every time you get a new conversation, the audio cuts out constantly, when connected with bluetooth headset if and other app plays a sound Skype for business just completely shuts down all audio until the other sound is done.
The entire Lync/Skype for Business team should be fired.
Glad I'm not alone. Already stamped a big red DNU on Teams for our division. The head IT honchos were looking to push it out asap but there's way, way too many resource issues and bugs that need to be ironed out. My budget is too stretched to play beta site for MS's (typical) lack of QC.
Sticking with Slack for now but did calendar 2019 to revisit Teams.
MSN Messenger - Discontinued
Windows Live Messenger - Discontinued
Lync - Discontinued
Skype for Business - About to be discontinued
Surely, this gives us major confidence in "Microsoft Teams"....
Ohh yeah and the name "Microsoft Teams" sucks some serious donkey 8====D, whereas "Slack" actually sounds like a cool product. Too bad MS' marketing team has this retarded notion that companies will not use products/services with cool names, it's gotta be bland, boring uninteresting naming.
If I were a buisness that used Skype, I'd be pissed off and probably change to Slack
If I were a business that used Skype, I'd wait and see and assess what it means, before jumping the gate and racing off in some unknown direction powered entirely by my own lack of information.
The list of US war crimes is 1000 times longer than yours.
What you psyop shill don't get is people don't give a shit about Putin, smearing Putin doesn't change the fact that the US is the biggest terrorist state on earth.
Putin isn't going around pretending to be some "Freedom" fighter, you Americans are, you fucks talk the biggest bullshit and do the biggest damages.
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CRIMES OF THE U.S. GOVERNMENT
United States war crimes
The Untold History of US War Crimes
U.S. Crimes Against Humanity: a history
Fellow blogger Marc Immanuel has written an extensive history of the United States and its ongoing imperial crimes against humanity from beginning to present, from its earliest days as a settler colonial enterprise to its numerous massacres of civilians in Iraq in the 21st century. The article gives a detailed account of each of the most well-known massacres committed against the Indigenous peoples by bloodthirsty white colonists who conducted what can only be described as a campaign of extermination against the original inhabitants of this land. These include
The Gnadenhutten Massacre
The Bad Axe Massacre
Bloody Island Massacre
Bear River Massacre
Sand Creek Massacre
Skeleton Cave Massacre
The Wounded Knee Massacre
Immanuelâ(TM)s research leads him to conclude that by the year 1900, the combined Indigenous population from the Atlantic Ocean to the Pacific stood at around 250,000, or âoeless than 5% of the original population prior to the beginning of the European invasion by Spanish colonialist forces in the early 16th century.â From there other forms of genocide against the Native peoples that were used are detailed and discussed, such as biological genocide and cultural genocide.
February 28, 1991 image from the Gulf War taken by Ken Jarecke showing the corpse of an Iraqi soldier who was burned alive in the U.S. blitzkrieg known as the âoeHighway of Death.â
Aside from the multitude of genocides committed against the Indigenous populations, thereâ(TM)s the horrific U.S. Army genocide against the people of the Philippine Islands, torture of Haitians during the 1915-1934 invasion and occupation, the CIAâ(TM)s barbaric and sadistic MKUltra mind control program, Abu-Ghraib and GITMO warehouses of torture, state-sponsored and state-sanctioned brutality against people of color in the U.S., involvement in the âOpium Warsâ(TM) in China, the forced opening of Japan, financial and military support of brutal military dictator regimes all across the globe, crimes of aggression and massacres of civilians in North and South Vietnam, crimes of aggression against Cuba, invasion of Grenada, predator drone attacks on innocent families in Afghanistan, Pakistan and Yemen, and much, much more. This is an essential read and good reference point to be returned to again and again to combat the oft-repeated myth of supposed
Lync, then Skype, then Jabber, now Skype again. We also use Webex for meetings. I swear, it's always the corporate IT guys jockeying for something. Once they finally settle on something, then MS changes their direction.
Excel and other MS applications are getting slower and less stable.
This push to the cloud is getting quite annoying.
My beliefs do not require that you agree with them.
Yep. We had Skype for Buisness, and a bunch of rogue Slack instances. Skype for Business is just so clunky in comparison. Finally management broke down and got a Slack license. I'm sure they'll move us to Teams eventually, I hope MS doesn't screw it up. Especially Mac and Android support. Not holding my breath.
Never let a lack of data get in the way of a good rant.
Sounds like an inept implementation. We have no issues with external conferencing be they dial in or using the web app.
Netmeeting was replaced by "Live Meeting", which was really just a brand change. It was part of the Live Communications Server and Office Communications Server platforms. Later, with Microsoft Lync, they brought all that functionality into one client. Then they rebranded that to Skype for Business. Nothing from Netmeeting has ever been lost, it still exists today inside of Skype for Business.
What the heck is Yammer I cant tell what the big difference is?
Have you used it? It isn't related to Skype at all - it evolved out of a separate product and is a steaming pile.
My former company ditched it even while in money saving mode and shelled out more subscription fees for Slack.
Microsoft knows exactly what they're doing here.
(Now if they only knew what the fuck they were doing with Windows...)
Time for a chat client name change!
* Messenger
* Communicator
* Lync
* Skype for Business (as opposed to "Skype for Pleasure"?)
... and those are just the ones that are still in my Applications folder! I think there were a couple besides those as well. And those are just corporate clients -- I'm not even talking about MSN Messenger, Windows Live Messenger, etc etc etc. And some were for both, before there was a big division between corporate and regular IM clients. ("MSN Messenger" came with Office X for Mac.)
Oh yeah, NetMeeting -- anyone else remember that?
And I'm sure I'm still forgetting one or two more.
Dear Slashdot: next time you want to mess with the site, add a rich-text editor for comments.
I would say they should have named it 'Lync' again. Skype for business has been the most confusing thing to talk about, because it has *zero* to do with Skype, except in the minds of MS marketing people.
As a result you can't just say 'Skype' because people won't do the right thing, you always had to say 'Skype for Business' which is a misleading mouthful.
Just Call it SOB
Stuppid businesses will fall for this, and 'upgrade'.
Smart businesses will find a more stable product, one that does not have a history of being 'replaced' frequently. Could be something opensource, could be something from a commercial competitor. But not Microsoft stuff. 'A smart business does not buy stuff for buying's sake.
Like Netmeeting, before Skype?
Nice copy pasta. Half of that shit is pure fabrication by the Kremlin, and the other half, this troll has to reach back hundreds of years to find a time when the US was as bad as Russia is now.
Russia has an even longer and bloodier history than the US. The czars were murderous hacks who considered their serf population as their own property. They brutalized all of their vassal states in the cold war. Stalin massacred hundreds of MILLIONS. Russia has the most blood on its hands, more than any other country EVER. Go back to your Kremlin masters and shove it.
"you psyop shill..." - whines the psyop shill
Seems like every time Microsoft touches something, it gets worse. Adding Microsoft to just about anything seems to equate to adding malvertising bloatware, and create no way for any decent feedback. I suppose the only question I have, is "when do they screw this up so badly, they buy Slack and kill that?"
I'm not familiar with Teams, but Slack is dreadful in the area of resource usage as well.
It currently hogs 1.5GB of my memory, with just 4 teams (of which 1 is defunct and not used at all) and absolutely nothing fancy going on (one or two images shared each day is about it).
Microsoft replacing a bunch of their duplicate services with one service to rule them all... I just wish they would decide on one and stick with it for a while.
The constant renaming and shifting strategies from NetMeeting to Groove to Yammer to Lync to Skype to Teams is getting kind of annoying.
That and their general problems with naming products.. geesh..
They're just copying Google's business model. Google Talk/Hangouts/Duo/Messages...
FWIW, Skype for Business probably had nothing to do with Skype from what I can figure out - it seems to be pretty much Lync with a revamped chat window. The code bases for Lync and Skype for Business probably overlap about 90%, compared to about 0% for Skype and Skype for Business.
You are not alone. This is not normal. None of this is normal.
I use Skype and Teams in my job and I can tell you one thing; Skype will not be missed...
that's because Microsoft already killed skype. It hasn't been since just before Microsoft bought it. And yet somehow it got worse.
Just another second banana
Yup. It's that bad and there is like zero traffic on it with one team. Just to have a presence in memory drags the machine. They really do have performance issues with it they need to address before expecting corps to deploy it.
Even if they said "Just go virtual" you'd still hear an ESX farm scream in terror as a group of people logged into their virtual desktops in the morning!
Never have a philosophy which supports a lack of courage
Is that AI thing in Microsoft Teams safe for users who /mostly/ work in VPN protected environments and encrypt a fair amount of data, email etc.?
...Extinguish
Who relies on anything else from Redmond?
After a little while, you'll beg them to switch away from Skype for Business. It has to be the only application that brings everyone in the entire company together. And we do come together and hate it so much.
Remember that Skype For Business is simply Microsoft Lync rebranded with the Skype name. It shares little or nothing with "consumer" Skype that most people are familiar with.
My employer adopted Lync, and then moved to Skype For Business. IM is the least of it for us. It's primarily a PBX replacement (VOIP), and for conference calls. I like it, but the opinion isn't universal. Having a stable network connection (I do) seems to make a big difference.
For what it's worth, this isn't the skype you use at home. It's a reskinned Lync with a few added features. Entirely different than consumer skype with a lot more back-end integration (outlook, exchange, sharepoint, etc) - and it's (unless using o365) entirely on-premise.
I work in an almost exclusively Microsoft shop and we've been using Slack for over a year to collaborate. Recently we tried Teams because it's nice to be able to use your Windows domain credentials for everything, instead of having yet another set just for Slack.
Teams didn't last one day, hell it didn't even last one HOUR, before we went back to Slack. Teams is so far behind in functionality - even basic functionality - that at this point it isn't even a competitor to Slack. For example, to upload a file in Slack, you drag and drop the file; in Teams, you not only have to have a fucking OneDrive account to upload a file, you also have to be on a Windows version newer than 7 (because 8 and up have the built-in OneDrive integration).
I'm about as pro-Microsoft as they get but Teams in its current incarnation is a terrible, terrible piece of software that MS should honestly be ashamed of. It does surpass Slack in one way though... it consistently uses a lot more memory to do nothing.
I would say they should have named it 'Lync' again. Skype for business has been the most confusing thing to talk about, because it has *zero* to do with Skype, except in the minds of MS marketing people.
As a result you can't just say 'Skype' because people won't do the right thing, you always had to say 'Skype for Business' which is a misleading mouthful.
I'm on a project now that involves a large S4B deployment and this is me at every single meeting. Skype for Business is stupid name so everyone just says Skype, then the discussion turns to original recipe Skype and some people already use 'Skype' so why are we deploying it again. Cue the explanations, rinse repeat for the last nine months...
Skype from what I can figure out - it seems to be pretty much Lync with a revamped chat window.
It's not even revamped, it's just Lync rebranded. It has nothing to do with original recipe Skype.
Our team was forced to change from Skype home to Teams and it has effectively killed all the conversation. If a web page needs a splash screen to entertain user while it loads itself for a minute, there is something deeply wrong in the service. And the resulting Teams page, which can cover only dozen or so lines of text messages, rest being useless whitespace and rounded corners, is worse than even the current Skype, which was phone-washed couple of years ago. Microsoft must be paying a lot of bribes to the corporate CIO:s to get that crap sold.
Hardly surprising given that Teams is an Electron application. This is also why #Slack is such a resource hog - it consumes about 1GB per Team because each team runs in its own extremely inefficient browser process.
I understand the desire for Write Once Run Anywhere but surely there are better platforms to use than Electron.
Shit, even the most recent executable is named "lync.exe". I'm pretty sure they just updated resources and released that.
Yeah good luck with that. Companies are the biggiest MS fanboys who killed the superior Novell Netware, Unix, and other products to one unifying Microsoft solution hoping it would cut down on costs and save them money.
Teams is Skype, Sharepoint, some chat application, and Slack?? I never even heard of it before. Has anyone else?
It is not from Microsoft so it will be ignored by the enterprise since MS has a similar option. Everyone uses Teams and Planner is the new rage so far this year
http://saveie6.com/
That's... what I just said. You'd have saved yourself some time if you read to the end of the paragraph!
You are not alone. This is not normal. None of this is normal.
Yep - marketdroids have no idea what people actually WANT. They aren't really talking to people that have ACTUAL problems to solve, they're merely trying to chase after
The parts of Microsoft that *actually listen* (mainly their developer tools, like visual studio onine) and are prepared to TRY and strike out and solve actual problems do work fine. But this .. this .. this is just insecure marketdroids trying copy the current market leaders.
Replacing a fully working product with something that's hardly out of alpha? And doesn't even aimed at the SAME issue? (Teams/Slack is very much a persistent collaboration environment tool, Lync is very much a 1 on 1 communications tool.)
It is utter lunacy.
lol, if I had started using this way back in 2015....my people would just now be getting the hang of it and time to switch again :O
All these great new products sure seem to have short lifespans now, making them rather less than great :/
15 mentions of Microsoft on the front page ..
I've been using Teams for a little bit at two of my clients - and I have to say Microsoft REALLY needs to improve the efficiency of Teams before they go fully replacing Skype. As soon as I run the fat-client app whether on Windows or Mac, it's a resource suck as bad as anything I have seen. It's like a really sad, slow version of Google Wave.
We just switched to Microsoft Teams, and it is absolutely terrible. All black, with candy colored highlights. This thing is so broken it does not auto scroll for new messages. You have to click the New Messages button to see new content. Terrible design, terrible interface, terrible product. Bring back Lync!!!
Visio still dominates the "drawing" software - there is NO Open Source alternative that is even 25% close to Visio! And don't tell me DIA - it's not even close - it barely compete in the space.
> Replacing a fully functional product that a company probably spent a lot of money hiring people to implement and integrate with the company network with another product just seems moronic.
I don't know any decision that MS made that was not moronic.
They're surviving by luck and circumstances (Windows and some of its products like Office) are already so prevalent that they cannot basically fail, at least not easily because all the apps are made for it.
But their innovation and decisions are probably the stupidest, one can come up with.
Let's hope they die off in this lifetime, and stop making everybody's life miserable.
Slack lacks VOIP though...
As a user of that crappy app, I welcome the change
I for one have a Skype for Business implementation that spans the globe. I have sites in Africa, UK, Brazil, Mexico, Germany Chile, and the US. All of my sites are tied together with Skype for Business. I have SIP trunks to every local PBX at every location so that I can call for free to any of these locations and they can call me. It is EXTREMELY cost effective and versatile. And it just WORKS.. So now they get teams.. It literally is copying a bunch of SKype for business features and really the only one that I see that is really different is the persistent conversation piece and maybe some scheduling. Why the HELL are they replacing SKype for Business with TEAMS when they already have a huge customer base using Skype for Business / Lync and they basically tell us that they will bring parts into Teams when it should be the other way around. They are going to release a piece of crap that is totally cloud dependent that won't have local PSTN support all the while basically ringing the death bell for Skype for Business. It is beyond Mind numbingly stupid. I can't as a technician in all honesty recommend a Microsoft product and have a company create an INFRASTRUCTURE around a product just to have them pull the plug on it for a FEATURE UPGRADE??? WTF????