At its Ignite conference today, Microsoft officially announced that it plans to make Microsoft Teams the core communication client in Office 365. The team collaboration app will soon integrate all Skype for Business Online capabilities, and it will replace the current Skype for Business client in Office 365 once it achieves feature parity.
This announcement is part of Microsoft’s “new vision for intelligent communications in Office 365,” with Microsoft Teams as the central hub for team communication and collaboration. After recently launching a new Dial In Conferencing feature in Teams in public preview, Microsoft detailed today all the upcoming communication features including inbound and outbound calls to PSTN numbers, hold, call transfer and voicemail, audio conferencing preview, as well as full interoperability between Team and Skype for Business.
It’s not the end of the road for Skype for Business though: the Redmond giant also announced today a new version of Skype for Business Server to be released in the second half of calendar year 2018. This new version will be for “customers who are not yet ready to move their PBX and advanced calling capabilities to the cloud,” explained Microsoft in the press release.