Monday, September 25, 2017

Microsoft Intelligent Communications Announcement

There was a big announcement today about Microsoft Teams and Skype for Business.

The big announcement is that Microsoft is uniting the Microsoft Teams and Skype for Business to bring together a new vision of intelligent communications.  Microsoft Teams is a core Microsoft’s vision for communications and bringing the Skype for Business capability into this solution will further enable communication within groups and teams of people.

So, what are some important facts?  This is what I picked up from the reference items below:
  • Skype for Business is not going away; Skype for Business is being incorporated and will remain a key solution for Microsoft.
  • Microsoft Teams will evolve as the primary client for intelligent communications for Office 365.
  • Skype for Business brand will not be removed, and that brand will be surfaced up in the Microsoft Teams client.
  • The integration of Skype for Business Online capabilities to the Microsoft Teams user experience will not occur immediately.  Features such as Cloud PBX and voice capabilities to Cloud PBX will not occur until late CY18.
  • Skype for Business clients will remain supported for a long-time, so customers have time to transition.  Running both Microsoft Teams and the Skype for Business client will remain supported.  Customer administrators have control and choice of how to transition users to this new experience.
  • Microsoft recommends to start using the core capabilities of Microsoft Teams sooner than later to prepare yourself for this transition.
  • They are bringing together “conversation can be captured, transcribed, and time-coded, with closed captioning and voice recognition for attributing remarks to specific individuals”.  From what I can tell they are leveraging services used to support the new Microsoft Stream service with this.  Brilliant!
  • Skype for Business Server will still have another on-premise release due out in CY18 H2.
References
Announcement - https://blogs.office.com/en-us/2017/09/25/a-new-vision-for-intelligent-communications-in-office-365/
Intelligent Communications - http://skypeandteams.fasttrack.microsoft.com/
FAQs - https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/MicrosoftTeams/faq-journey

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