Overall Satisfaction with Skype
Skype is included with the university's Office 365 subscription, and all Active Directory users can access and be contacted via Skype. We sometimes use it for within- and between-department communication, especially for quick instant messaging. Skype is, of course, one of the original household names in videoconferencing, etc., but we don't use it much for that on a daily basis.
- Skype for Business has grown quite a lot since its days as Microsoft Lync and is now quite nicely integrated with almost facets of Windows and Office (and other Microsoft stuff).
- It's nice for inter-office communication when everyone's using Active Directory and has Skype for Business running.
- Skype for Business works well even on non-Windows and/or non-university machines (e.g. personal computers).
- Skype in general, including the Business version, can be pretty clunky, and surprisingly resource-hungry, especially when it's always running, and on machines with lower specs.
- This resource hungriness can be worth it for quick IMs to other members of the same organization, but I really have a hard time recommending Skype over something like Zoom for videoconferencing.
- Video communication with others in the same organization just doesn't always seem to work very well, even on the same network.
- Skype has allowed us to communicate quickly and easily across departments.
- Unfortunately, has proven to be confusing and unused by some users.
- Users' non-use of Skype can be pretty detrimental to the performance of some lower-powered machines especially.
- Microsoft Teams and Zoom
Microsoft Teams seems to do everything that Skype does, but allows for much more collaboration with Office products, is much less clunky, and is much more easy to understand, seemingly. For videoconferencing, especially with offsite or non-organization users, Zoom is unrivaled in my opinion. It's lightweight, easy for everyone to use, and has great options for collaboration and sharing.
Do you think Skype delivers good value for the price?
Yes
Are you happy with Skype's feature set?
Yes
Did Skype live up to sales and marketing promises?
I wasn't involved with the selection/purchase process
Did implementation of Skype go as expected?
Yes
Would you buy Skype again?
No