Microsoft Teams: The Skype for Business Takeover

For the past couple of years, Microsoft has put an emphasis on Microsoft Teams replacing Skype for Business by adding audio/video conferencing and telephony features to the product. However, Teams provides far more than corporate telecoms and conferencing ; it is an all-in-one collaboration solution. Teams is just under a couple of years old, but it’s become the fastest growing business product in Microsoft history, already used by 87 Fortune 100 companies.  

Last week, Intelogy attended Microsoft Ignite in London and the benefits of Teams in meeting life-cycles were very apparent. 

• Teams facilitates complete meeting experiences, from scheduling forthcoming sessions and inviting external guests, right through to accessing previous recordings and transcripts. 
• Meetings can be accessed from multiple devices and external guests can be managed from a meeting lobby. During meetings, users can stream videos, speakers and content to thousands with live events. 
• Teams also allows users to chat with attendees after the meeting to keep them informed of updates and action items, review meeting notes to review assigned follow ups and schedule additional meetings.  

Skype for Business vs Microsoft Teams 

 Skype for Business, previously known as Lync, was specifically made for voice and video calls. Microsoft Teams has been built as an all-round team collaborating tool which allows for a collaborative environment, allowing users to share and collaborate on projects with popular Office 365 apps like Word, Excel, PowerPoint, OneNote, SharePoint, and Power BI, whilst also offering voice calls and video conferencing. 

So how does Microsoft Teams trump Skype for Business? 

It’s very clear that Microsoft Teams incorporates all the features of Skype for Business and more. Users now have more attributes than ever before, with Hi-Fidelity screen share, even from your mobile device; background blur during video calls to avoid distractions, and pre-meet screens to allow you to adjust your settings before entering calls. Microsoft Teams offers a complete collaboration tool when used with the rest of the Office 365 applications. Microsoft are pushing Teams as their main communication tool, so it’s constantly being developed. Even if your favourite Skype feature isn’t yet available, it won’t be long before it is. 

While Teams excels at providing exceptional collaboration, it needs to be carefully governed and administrated. Without any oversight in place, organisations can quickly find themselves unable to easily manage their content, potentially leading to information breaches and a compliance headache to resolve.  

Intelogy is a leading expert at helping organisations to successfully roll out Teams, in a sustainable, governed manner, significantly reducing the chances that you might face a future regulatory compliance nightmare.   

Contact one of our experts to find out how Intelogy can to transform your business into a digital workplace today.