Microsoft’s move to replace Skype for Business Online with Microsoft Teams reflects a larger unified communications trend of vendors and users focused on team-based, cloud-based, messaging-centric collaboration applications. This shift is significant for unified communications users, as it highlights a different way of working and ushers in new user interfaces.
To some degree, these team collaboration tools could displace traditional email clients, intranets and instant messaging services. Unified communications vendors are making team collaboration tools the core of their UC offering, said Irwin Lazar, an analyst at Nemertes Research, a tech advisory firm based in Mokena, Ill. The rollout of Microsoft Teams furthers this collaboration movement.
