It feels like Skype for Business is firmly in its twilight years now.
Earlier this month, Microsoft announced that from October 1, 2023, Teams Rooms will no longer support connections to the Skype for Business server. As described by Microsoft, a “small number of customers” that leverage on-premise configurations will be affected by this development.
The removal of Skype for Business support in Teams Rooms will mean certain meeting mode options will not be available, including Skype for Business only, Skype for Business and Microsoft Teams (default), Skype for Business (default) and Microsoft Teams. Additionally, all Skype for Business settings will be erased from the device settings and setup experience.
“This is another nail in the coffin for Skype for Business,” Tom Arbuthnot, Microsoft Teams Expert and Co-Founder of Empowering.Cloud, told UC Today. “Obviously, Skype Business Online has all been depreciated and gone, but there is still a Skype Business server as the on-premises solution.”
“Very little notice here,” Arbuthnot continued, “this will be retired effective October 1 2023. I’m assuming Microsoft has already talked to or alerted customers.”
The withdrawal of support for Skype for Business for Teams Rooms continues Microsoft’s extended transition from Skype to Teams as its marquee business communications and collaboration platform — in 2018, Microsoft announced that Teams had achieved feature parity with Skype for Business.
In 2019, Microsoft decided to retire Skype for Business Online, with July 31, 2021, confirmed as the final cut-off date.
Four years ago, Microsoft presented Skype for Business Online users with a similar pitch as in 2023. Microsoft Teams was sold as the natural migration path for those with impacted services but also showcased improved performance and more innovative features.
In place of Teams Rooms being connected to the Skype for Business server, Team Rooms is shifting its support to the Exchange server, which is already used by the Teams Desktop.
“Microsoft Teams Rooms, which used to be Skype Room Systems (SRS) at the moment, can talk to both old-school Skype servers and Teams,” Arbuthnot expanded. “They’re now dropping that capability out of the Rooms systems to talk to the Skype servers, so they will only be Teams native.”
Arbuthnot acknowledged that there would be a “very small subset of server customers left” and that “there’s probably a smaller subset that also uses Microsoft Teams Rooms”.
“Nevertheless, this will impact some customers,” Arbuthnot clarified. Every customer deserves care and attention, and this move materially encourages them towards cloud adoption.
“It’s another nudge towards, ‘While Skype Business server on-prem is still supported, it’s not our favourite, it’s not our future, get on board with cloud, basically.'”
What Now After Microsoft Unbundles Teams from Office?
Arbuthnot also spoke to UC Today about Microsoft’s decision to unbundle Teams and Office and the impact on Microsoft’s customers.
“They’re going to have a skew without Teams, so it’ll be $2 less than the equivalent bundles — both the business packages and the enterprise packages, but there’ll be no Teams in there,” Arbuthnot explained. “For those that want Teams, they’ll have to spend an extra €5 to add Teams back into that bundle.”
Crucially, that only applies to prospective customers in the EEA and not current customers or those outside the European Economic Area. “All existing customers can stay on their current packages; it doesn’t price-change for them,” Arbuthnot added.
In theory, the unbundling should improve competition in the UC and collaboration market.
“If you’re a Slack shop or a Webex shop,” Arbuthnot expanded, “you can save $2 a month because you don’t need Teams, and the theory is you could spend that elsewhere, and it makes it more competitive(…) I think generally it’s good for the industry if there’s more competition, so from that point of view it’s a good thing.”
