Decommission your on-premises Skype for Business environment

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Important

Skype for Business Online operated by 21Vianet in China will be retired on October 1, 2023. If you haven't upgraded your Skype for Business Online users yet, they will be automatically scheduled for an assisted upgrade. If you want to upgrade your organization to Teams yourself, we strongly recommend that you begin planning your upgrade path today. Remember that a successful upgrade aligns technical and user readiness, so be sure to leverage our upgrade guidance as you navigate your journey to Teams.

Skype for Business Online, excluding the service operated by 21Vianet in China, was retired on July 31, 2021.

If your organization uses Teams with an on-premises deployment of Skype for Business Server, you can migrate these environments fully to the cloud, and then retire your on-premises deployment of Skype for Business Server.

Note

Before decommissioning your on-premises environment, you must configure hybrid connectivity between your on-premises deployment and Microsoft 365. After configuring hybrid connectivity, you can migrate users to the cloud, while migrating their meetings from on-premises, and migrating any contacts from Skype for Business Server to Teams. Configuring hybrid connectivity is a required step to migrate users from on-premises to the cloud and to ensure full Teams functionality.

To complete your move from on-premises to the cloud and decommission your on-premises Skype for Business Server environment, you must complete the following steps in the following order: