Teams is not a one-to-one replacement for Skype for Business. Without this, chances are your Teams deployment will encounter one or more of these common pitfalls. It’s a business change that requires careful management and buy-in from stakeholders across the organisation to succeed. That makes its adoption much more than just an IT project. It’s also a symbiotic part of the broader Microsoft 365 ecosystem that has to be properly integrated and appropriately governed to (safely) deliver on its full potential. Teams is not just a new platform with new functionality that users need to get to grips with. If there was one lesson that lockdown taught organisations scrambling to accommodate a work-from-home workforce, it was that rushed and/or unplanned adoption of Microsoft Teams seldom goes well.

And yes, we really do mean plan – contrary to popular belief, Teams adoption takes a lot more than just switching on the functionality and telling users to uninstall Skype for Business. That means the clock has officially started ticking for businesses running Microsoft 365 or Office 365 who have not yet begun to plan their migration over to Microsoft Teams. Skype for Business Server 2019 will remain supported until 2025, but no new features will be added. Microsoft has announced that support for Skype for Business will end on 31 July 2021. The time has finally come for good old Skype for Business to make way for its communication and collaboration successor – Microsoft Teams.

Uninstall skype for business office 365