It's official: Microsoft is upgrading Skype for Business to Microsoft Teams

Microsoft could soon be moving Skype for Business to Microsoft Teams, the company’s latest service for collaboration within organizations. The company is now allowing some users to upgrade Skype for Business to Microsoft Teams. Skype for Business showed a message (which has now disappeared) earlier, announcing that it’s is now Microsoft Teams, reports ZDNet. Microsoft today confirmed that it’s allowing users to upgrade Skype for Business to Microsoft Teams, but it’s likely the upgrade will be rolled out to everyone automatically later on:

“We’re upgrading Skype for Business to Microsoft Teams. This will take us some time to complete. For now, this is an opt-in experience, as we continue to work on enhancing the Microsoft Teams experience. We encourage you to take control of your upgrade to Microsoft Teams. Start getting yourself familiar with the Microsoft Teams experience.”

Microsoft Teams was known as Skype Teams internally before it was rebranded weeks ahead of the official launch. The service was built by the Skype team at Microsoft, and it also includes (almost) all the calling features you can currently use on Skype for Business. With that said, it’s not too surprising to see Microsoft turning Skype for Business into Microsoft Teams. The regular Skype app for consumers is getting modern features which arguably make it less friendly for professional use, and Microsoft turning Skype for Business into Microsoft Teams at this point will enable the company to keep their enterprise users satisfied while giving them a peek at some of the modern features needed for team collaboration in 2017 (read: stickers, GIFs, bots).

Update: Microsoft has now officially confirmed (via Petri) that it’s upgrading Skype for Business to Microsoft Teams as an opt-in experience for the time being. We have updated the article.