Skype for Business vs. Whatsapp

1. With whatsapp people may chat with anyone who has whatsapp application. And whatsapp is free. For people it's easier to communicate via whatsapp. S4b is paid. You may communicate only with companies that uses skype for business, and only if your administrators configure federated trust with that company. S4b is used only within one organization, but people need to communicate other people who don't have S4b. There is no solution to add people who uses free IM messengers, but skype. However, with S4b you are able to communicate only with "microsoft account"-ed skype users.

2. S4b doesn't support chat on mobile devices. Nowadays you can't find person who doesn't have a smartphone. I don't understand why microsoft didn't implement chat on mobile devices.

3. whatsapp disadvantage is only in conferences. whatsapp don't have them at all. S4b has a desktop, powerpoint sharing, and usefull conferencing tools. You may even invite a person outside of your organization, who even don't have S4b application. He may use guest account via browser plugin. 

Other than the lack of control that some of the other responses cited I would say that Whatsapp is essentially a consumer tool and not an enterprise/business grade solution (a bit like 'Consumer' Skype v's Skype for Business).

If they want a 'Persistant' chat experience similar to that that whatsapp provides you could look at Microsoft Teams to compliment your SfB deployment...

Thanks to all for your insights.  I'll be meeting with the group later this week to see what their needs really are and how we can address them with S4B (or other services within Office 365)

The only real advantage I can think of that WhatsApp has over Skype for Business is that I can have a conversation going, on the web through WhatsApp and then pickup my phone and carry on that conversation. Whereas with Skype for Business I would need to remake the conversation, ask the other person to resend anything that I missed or need to reference.

This is a constant frustration for me personally, though that's not a suggestion to use WhatsApp over Skype for Business, it's very much not suitable for a business environment in pretty much every other aspect.

Whatsapp is definitely outclassed and outshined by Skype for Business in regards to feature set and central managability so my instinct would be to get in a room with them and try and get to the bottom of what it is they really like about whatsapp and if it is a feature that S4B cannot do (unlikely) they look at other items in the O365 offering that could emulate their requirements.

The only thing I can think of is the chat room style functionality that whatsapp seems to more naturally do. And that can be easily emulated with other tools like Yammer and in a more feature rich controlled manner.

Once you allow your staff to start using WhatsApp for work, soon they will be connecting with their friends and socialising as well using WhatsApp. With Skype for Business, you can simply enable the policies to stop them adding any external Skype accounts.

Apart from that Skype for Business has many more features that are relevant to business users compared to WhatsApp.

I wish you good luck :)

You do realize Whatsapp's (and similar apps) model is basically "sell customers data", right?

For us, if I read the Whatsapp website correctly, Whatsapp would be a total no go as it doesn't archive conversations like Skype does.

Also, policy for us is that if we have a tool already in our toolbox for users then they have to have a really compelling business case why the organization would invest time and money in something else.