Microsoft has been rolling new features to Teams at a rapid pace. The transition from Skype for Business Online to Teams is going to quickly follow.
Microsoft is considering Teams at feature parity for many of Skype for Business Online (SfBO) features. For example, organizations currently using SfBO for IM and presence only should consider Teams ready as a replacement and begin planning and adoption immediately. The exception here is while guest access exists in Teams, it is a Slack style external access requiring changing of identities as opposed to the SfB federated experience where communication is seamless between internal/external contacts.
Federated access for Teams is on the roadmap. The roadmap is detailed and updated regularly, and should be bookmarked.
Phone system and voice features are a little more complex. While the feature parity is close with the Microsoft products, there will be a lag time associated with the third parties waiting for guidance from Microsoft on how to integrate their products (handsets) and waiting to see how things shake out with the migration so they understand the install base and their opportunity size. Having said that, an organization purely on headsets could feasibly move to Teams as the voice client now.
Conference Room integration will likely be faster than handset integration. I think this is owed in part to the Microsoft provided Skype Room System standard and the ease of update for this from Skype to Teams since it’s a Windows 10 platform.
With all workloads, larger organizations should take advantage of the tools and planning guidance available for co-existence so they can begin piloting and testing. A robust library is available at http://aka.ms/successwithteams.
Do you have questions about what this transition looks like for your organization? Talk to our experts that can answer your questions and help strategize the right time for you to make the move.
