But don’t take our word for it! Learn more about the potential benefits of Teams for your organization with the recently published Forrester white paper “ The Total Economic Impact of Microsoft Teams.” Teams isn’t just an upgrade for Skype for Business Online, it’s a powerful tool that opens the door to an entirely new way of doing business. Using Teams, companies across the world are becoming more agile, shortening cycle times, improving the efficiency of key workflows, and cutting out unnecessary overhead. Customers who have already made the move tell us that Teams not only has helped them improve collaboration generally, it has also provided a rare opportunity to rethink the way work gets done in their organizations. Over the last two years, we’ve worked closely with customers to refine Teams, and we now feel we’re at the point that we can confidently recommend it as an upgrade to all Skype for Business Online customers. Teams combines chat, video, calling, and document collaboration into a single, integrated app – and enables an entirely new way of working. In 2017 we launched Microsoft Teams as “the hub for teamwork” in Microsoft 365.

Please note that the Skype Consumer service and Skype for Business Server will both be unaffected by this announcement. However, starting September 1, 2019, we will onboard all new Office 365 customers directly to Teams for chat, meetings, and calling. Between now and then, current Skype for Business Online customers will experience no change in service, and they’ll be able to continue to add new users as needed. Skype for Business Online will be retired on July 31, 2021, and after that date the service will no longer be accessible. What is the Skype for Business Retirement plan?

This post provides details on the retirement plan, a brief explanation of why we’re making this announcement now, and a summary of what we’re doing to help customers migrate to Teams. Today we’re announcing that Skype for Business Online will be retired on July 31, 2021.

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