Microsoft will cease their Skype for Business Online service on 31 July 2021.

Microsoft announced this ‘end of life’ over two years ago, and has been moving all its customers to its new replacement service, Microsoft Teams. Although Teams isn’t a like-for-like replacement, Microsoft say it has reached parity for Skype for Business and hence this is why the latter is being ceased.

It is important to note that Skype (for home users) will continue to work. So too will Skype for Business Server, but this is an on-premise solution that is likely used by only very large organisations who own and maintain their own servers. There is also no incentive to use Skype for Business Server as it no longer has a roadmap (its social media accounts were last update in 2018!).

On 31 July, all of the following will be true:

• The core Skype for Business Online service will stop working.
• Any integrations will no longer be supported.
• Organisations which have been using Skype for Business alongside Teams coexistence mode will be switched over to Teams only mode.

You can find Microsoft’s announcement on this topic here.