Item: Skype for Business, now part of Microsoft Teams
Rating: 6
Author: Ho'omana Nathan Horton

Use Cases and Deployment Scope

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-department 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.

Pros and Cons

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.

Return on Investment

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.

Alternatives Considered

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.

Support Rating

Skype has been around long enough that there's quite a lot of resources available online, including from Microsoft. However, this can also be problematic since it's been through so many versions, and sometimes support for one version or iteration of Skype is totally irrelevant for the most recent version. This has improved recently as Microsoft has worked to unify their apps, but there's still plenty of room for improvement.

Key Insights

Do you think Skype for Business, now part of Microsoft Teams delivers good value for the price?

Yes

Are you happy with Skype for Business, now part of Microsoft Teams's feature set?

Yes

Did Skype for Business, now part of Microsoft Teams live up to sales and marketing promises?

I wasn't involved with the selection/purchase process

Did implementation of Skype for Business, now part of Microsoft Teams go as expected?

Yes

Would you buy Skype for Business, now part of Microsoft Teams again?

Other Software Used

Microsoft Teams, Heroku Platform, Canva, Canvas

Likelihood to Recommend

Skype for Business (like its predecessor Lync) is nice for quick inter-office communication, but again, Microsoft Teams seems to be better for that stuff and allows for more collaboration. One of Skype's biggest weaknesses, as mentioned before, is how resource hungry it tends to be, so it's kind of a lot to leave on all the time.

Skype for Business has grown a lot since Lync, but is still a little outclassed by Teams and Zoom

Overall Satisfaction with Skype for Business (formerly Lync)