Item: Skype for Business, now part of Microsoft Teams
Rating: 7
Author: Marco Poletto

Use Cases and Deployment Scope

We have dislocated offices, two in different UK cities, one in Holland and several in USA. Skype for Business helps us to reduce the distance gap. We organize weekly meetings and keep in touch each other to better coordinate our work.

Pros and Cons

Reliability
Diffusion of the software (it's hard to find someone that doesn't have it installed)
Brand name (it's even harder find someone that, at least, knows it so let him install takes a second)

Codec for audio quality and it's lightweight.
The terms and license. Open software is always a good thing, or at least open protocol.
A decent Linux client.

Return on Investment

Cut a lot of communication costs.
Cut a lot of business trips
Good feature like the desktop sharing helps to explain and show PowerPoint presentations

Alternatives Considered

HipChat and Google Hangouts

HipChat is more a 1 to 1 chat and is not a proper contender but Google Hangouts has pretty all we need and at the moment has taken Skype for Business' place. It's free and is even more widespread than Skype. You need just Google Chrome.

Other Software Used

Google Hangouts, HipChat, Atlassian Confluence, Magento

Likelihood to Recommend

I think is really good to improvise a meeting at the last second. For example a meeting for a quote or a presentation from (or for) another company. The big user base helps to reach a "communication established" really quickly with all the participants.

Good and reliable but not perfect

Overall Satisfaction with Skype for Business