Microsoft Ends Skype for Business Server Support in Teams Rooms

Microsoft has announced that from October 1, 2023, Teams Rooms will not support connections to the Skype for Business server.

According to Microsoft, a “small number of customers” that use on-premise configurations will be impacted by this change.

In its place, Team Rooms is shifting its support to the Exchange server, which is already used by the Teams Desktop.

Matt Taylor, Senior Product Marketing Manager at Microsoft, made the announcement via Microsoft’s blog: “While the Microsoft Teams product team is rapidly releasing new features and capabilities for Microsoft Teams Rooms and continues innovating to deliver more intelligent, inclusive, and productive meeting experiences we must end support for some legacy technologies.

“We are announcing the end of support for Skype for Business server connections for on-premises customers.”

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), and Skype for Business (default) and Microsoft Teams.

All Skype for Business settings will be taken out of the device settings and setup experience.

The legacy home screen which provided support for Skype for Business in Teams Rooms on Windows will no longer be available.

Furthermore, in the new version of Teams Rooms for Windows introduced earlier this year, there is an option to ‘opt out’ to return to the previous interface, which will also be removed.

Microsoft encouraged users to adopt the new Microsoft Teams online service, which provides an extension to Skype for Business capabilities, as well as offering “more intelligent and exciting ways to collaborate”.

It also provided links to resources to help companies thinking of transitioning from Skype for Business to Microsoft Teams.

In its ‘Get Started’ article, Microsoft explains the benefits of upgrading to Microsoft Teams:

“Microsoft Teams extends the capabilities of Skype for Business, bringing together chat, meetings, calling, collaboration, app integration, and file storage into a single interface.

“Teams helps streamline the way users get things done, improving user satisfaction and accelerating business outcomes.

“We’re continually expanding Teams’ capabilities to enable you to communicate and collaborate in new ways, break down organizational and geographical barriers, and drive efficiency in process and decision making.”

In fact, in 2018, Microsoft announced that Teams had achieved feature parity with Skype for Business.

The following year, Microsoft decided to retire Skype for Business Online, making July 31, 2021, the final cut-off date.

Microsoft’s messaging to Skype for Business Online users was the same as it is now in that it also presented Microsoft Teams as the natural migration path for those with affected services, as well as boasting a greater feature set.

Skype for Business was born out of Skype’s consumer offering in 2014, following Microsoft’s acquisition of Skype in 2011 for $8.5 billion.

The Skype for Business Online variant was made available through the Microsoft Office 365 productivity suite, but it soon started to compete with Microsoft Teams.

As Teams was the company’s preferred platform, it took the decision to retire Skype for Business Online while trying to convert as many Skype customers into Teams users as possible in the process.

No doubt Microsoft is thinking along similar lines again. It is going all-in on Teams and it seems to be working, based on recent achievements, such as hitting 300 million monthly active users earlier this year.