Microsoft Corp. said Tuesday it will retire its Skype for Business Online meeting and collaboration service in July 2021 in favor of its newer Microsoft Teams product.

The company had said in the past that its eventual plan was to ditch Skype for Business as its main tool for business video calls, but had never said when it intended to do so.

Now there’s a concrete date. The service will remain available until July 31, 2021, though the company intends to start onboarding new Office 365 customers to Microsoft Teams as its default service starting later this year. The Skype consumer service, and Skype for Business Server, which is for companies that don’t use Microsoft’s cloud services, will not be affected.

Consolidating its efforts with Teams makes sense for Microsoft as it’s currently focused on rival Slack Technologies Inc. in the collaboration market. Earlier this month, Microsoft announced that Teams now has 13 million daily active users, which likely puts it ahead of Slack. Closing down Skype for Business should help to grow that figure considerably.

“Over the last two years, we’ve worked closely with customers to refine Teams, and we now feel we’re at the point that we can confidently recommend it as an upgrade to all Skype for Business Online customers,” James Skay, a senior product marketing manager in the Intelligent Communications group at Microsoft, wrote in a blog post announcing the retirement of Skype for Business.

Before it closes Skype for Business, Microsoft said it plans to add quite a few new features to Teams to ensure parity between the two services. These will include the ability to handle calls between Teams and Skype users, which will be added next year, plus Contact Center Integration and Compliance recording, and the ability to set shorter data retention periods.

Image: Microsoft