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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.
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.
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
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.
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.
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.
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.
Lync was never replaced by Skype. It was rebranded Skype for Business. Lync/Skype for Business was always lagging functionality found elsewhere. Slack has just come on MS' radar as a target. The problem for MS, is that they know they need to compete, but don't really know why. Which is why they keep changing focus.
Agent K: A *person* is smart. People are dumb, stupid, panicky animals, and you know it.
When a large corporation has multiple products in one space, it usually means one of two things: either they are pursuing distinct niches, or they have no major strategy for that market.
It also means that the development talent is divided into separate groups.
If Microsoft is killing Skype for Business to focus on Teams, that means they have identified their business communication product as an important market. They are probably consolidating their dev talent, and they are probably going to integrate and promote the application more heavily.
With Slack being a relative newcomer, this could make it much harder to compete. I assume Microsoft will copy the most important features and court Slack customers immediately, which could kill the company if Microsoft does a good job.
I don't know why Slack is called out in particular. There are certainly other established apps like Webex and GoTo. Maybe Microsoft has a thing for Slack? I don't pay attention to corporate drama.
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According to the latest ruleset, this post should be modded as Vorpal Flamebait +5.
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.
To be fair, Lync was a cool name. They should have kept 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..