Migrate from Skype for Business to Teams

[rahulpawar40]

Hi,

We are discussing about migrating our users from Skype for Business-On premise to Microsoft Teams. Now, scenario is we have couple of hundred users working in Russia and as per Russian data localization law we can not migrate them on Teams because our cloud tenant resides in Europe.

What we want to know is best mode for Teams in above scenario

1. Islands coexistence mode(we are currently on this mode)

2. Skype for Business with Teams collaboration

3. Skype for Business with Teams collaboration and meetings

4. Teams Only

5. Skype for Business Only

- With first mode we can not achieve the ultimate goal of migrating from Skype to Teams

- With 2nd mode users can not use Teams (chat, calling & meetings) feature

- With 3rd mode users can not use Teams (chat and calling) feature

- 4th mode: How this mode is working exactly? What is Interoperability?

* Is it possible to have chat or call from Skype to teams and vice-versa with this mode?

* Is it possible to have common meeting between Skype and teams with this mode?

Important to note here is Russia's users can't be moved to cloud as Microsoft don't have data centers in Russia. Is there any alternative of local data centers? And how it would work with security and compliance perspective.

I have referred below articles from Microsoft

https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/microsoftteams/upgrade-and-coexistence-of-skypeforbusiness-and-team...

https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/MicrosoftTeams/upgrade-framework

Second thing is about Teams archive feature

1. Is this feature is available by default to end user(owners) or can Teams Admin or Global Admin disable this feature, How?

2. Is it possible to Archive Channel?

[#2]

Not sure you want to be in islands. If so your Russian users have access to Teams right now I believe. It’s usually always best practice if you plan to have interior between the two products is have it I. Skype only mode and work from there. How long have your users been in islands? Has anyone been logging in and using Teams yet? (Usage reports should show this if not sure)

[#3]

@Chris Webb,

We don't want to be in islands. No Russian user don't have access to Teams(No Microsoft 365 services). We are in island mode for almost 1 year but not all users are using Teams(Usage report shows around 18 k have used Teams so far)

not sure if I have understood the highlighted text.

[#4]

Ahhh, gotcha on the Russian accounts, thought they were in 365, my bad there.

Check out this awesome video covering interop between the modes. Basically you need to home or convert your Island users that will be moving, to be homed / hybrid Skype Online mode in order to talk to Skype users from Teams since Teams with on-prem Skype users cannot talk to Skype users from Teams. The video explains all this really well!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wEc9u4S3GIA

[#5]

@Chris Webb,

Thank you for sharing this contents, I have gone through it. As per this video, it says that we have to migrate to Skype for business online for interoperability between Teams and Skype for Business-On premise. And as per the latest update from microsoft on 31st July 2019, that SFB Online will be retired on 31 July 2021. This youtube video was from Nov' 2018, is it still relevant as per latest update from Microsoft. Got confused about SFB Online, because we cannot migrate Russian users to SFB Online as per legal requirement russian users or contents can not be migrated to cloud and will remain on on-premise only.