Microsoft's Skype for Business Online to be retired on 31 July 2021

And starting 1st September 2019, all new Office 365 customers will only be able to use Microsoft's Slack-rival Teams for calling, chat and meetings

Microsoft is to retire Skype for Business Online on 31st July 2021.

This is the first time that the company has mentioned a retirement date for Skype for Business Online as part of its drive to encourage users to migrate to Teams, the company's rival to Slack.

According to Microsoft, the current users of Skype for Business won ' t see any change in the service for the next two years, although, starting from 1st September 2019, all new Office 365 customers will use only Teams for calling, chat, and meetings.

Microsoft has also revealed that Skype for Business server and Skype for Consumers services will remain unaffected from these changes, and will continue to work beyond 31st July 2021.

Some features currently supported by Skype for Business Online are not yet available on Microsoft Teams. The company is aware of the situation and will add new features in Microsoft Teams before Skype for Business Online is finally retired. One such new feature will be the ability for Teams and Skype consumer customers to communicate using chat and calling. That feature will be added by the first calendar quarter of 2020.

"Over the last two years, we ' ve worked closely with customers to refine Teams, and we now feel we ' re at the point that we can confidently recommend it as an upgrade to all Skype for Business Online customers," James Skay, a senior product marketing manager in the Intelligent Communications group at Microsoft, said in a blog post.

Microsoft launched Teams in 2016 as "the hub for teamwork" in Microsoft 365. In the past two years, the product has seen a constant rise in its user base, and earlier this month, Microsoft announced that Teams is now being used by more than 13 million daily active users.

It was the first disclosure of daily usage metrics for the Teams app, which offers instant messaging, group chats, and audio/video meeting, as well as integration of Microsoft and third-party applications.

Microsoft ' s acquisition of internet telephony service Skype in 2011 was one of its biggest ever at a price tag of $8.5 billion.

In 2014, the company launched Skype for Business, which soon became Microsoft ' s most popular meeting tool for millions of people around the world. The tool provided an exciting way for business communications by combining instant messaging, video and calling into a single app.