Okay, so you’re an IT Pro who does Skype for Business stuff, and you’re a bit freaked out by Teams and a reduction in your demand. Worry not! First have a crack at my previous posts aimed at the organization and IT department.

In the organization post, I point out that SfB on-prem isn’t quite dead yet. In fact, it won’t be for a while. Feel free to do nothing, and you should have a number of years of success with SfB on-prem skills. However, if you do that, at some point you’ll find yourself in a career cul-de-sac.  Don’t do that! (But do read Will Rowe’s book, it’s good, and I’m not getting paid to say this). As the book title suggests, you need to evolve or your career will die.

Did you see a ton of stuff in my two previous posts that you could pick up as skills, and stay on top of your game? You should have! If you’re the gal or guy who can confidently answer questions about how Teams works, what a SfB to Teams transition might look like, and how to help navigate your organization or IT department through that, you are in a great spot!

Other than focusing on learning what I’ve already covered, here are some other suggestions for you to consider.

If you’re on on-prem IT pro, get thee to the cloud! Learn the basics of Office 365 and hybrids. You can follow the learning paths for exam 70-346 Managing Office 365 Identities and 70-347 Enabling Office 365 Services. Microsoft is all about the Cloud, and you may find you need hybrid configurations for migrations, compliance, or to appease office politics.

Do you know anything about Azure? Check out this site for a great, uh, Azure overview. You can also get a free Azure account, which gives you no excuse for not expanding your knowledge. While Azure may not be directly related to SfB and Teams, it’s full of Bots/Machine Learning/AI, IoT, and other great stuff that does, will, or could (if you make it) integrate with Teams and drive value. You knowing about this stuff makes you more valuable that someone who doesn’t have a clue how the Bot Framework and what you can do with it and Teams.

Security and compliance are also big deals. GDPR is everywhere right now, and even if you’re not in Europe it can most certainly apply to your organization. Knowing how GDPR (or any other compliance regulations) applies to Teams gives you an edge and keeps you relevant.

Microsoft is Cloud first, Mobile first, which means that anything you can learn about mobile devices and clients will help you. Go find out how MFA (MultiFactor Authentication), Conditional Access, and MDM (Mobile Device Management) and impact not only mobile phones & tablets, but also laptops and boring desktop PCs. If you’re an iPhone user, get your hands on an Android and figure out how SfB, Teams, MFA, CA, and MDM work on the “other” platform. Likewise if you’re an Android user. Only knowing about half the major mobile platforms makes you LESS that half as useful as someone who knows about both.

And lastly, much my last IT department focused post was network centric. If you don’t have your CCNA, consider working towards it. Once upon a time to get your MCSE you had to write a “Network Essentials” exam. CCNA gives you that knowledge and more. You don’t have to be a network guy working on Cisco gear to derive value from the CCNA classes or certification. CCNA is full of background knowledge, and the part that’s “specific” to Cisco gear isn’t that specific since almost everyone copies Cisco’s interface, or is “influenced by an industry standard interface” as I’ve heard one vendor explain it.

The bottom line is that IT evolves, and this is just another evolution. SfB used to be Lync, which used to be LCS, which used to be OCS… Go learn something cool!

In my previous post I talked about what I feel an organization should be doing during the SfB to Teams transition. In this post, I’ll cover what an IT department should be doing to support the organization.

There are several things that an IT department needs to consider when moving from Skype for Business Server to SfB Online or Teams. The biggest by far is shifting from servers – and the associated maintenance and operations – to a focus on the network. In particular, we’ve been spoiled by 1G and faster LANs with SfB on-prem. Fantastic network performance on the LAN meant we could run a bit looser, not needing to worry about bandwidth or QoS. With SfBO and Teams, that’s a different story. You should be looking at:

Internet bandwidth – is it enough? Is it symmetric, so that upstream traffic doesn’t suffer?

QoS – While it’s true that the Internet doesn’t do QoS, you can certain have your firewall prioritize traffic based on DSCP values. You should also have it classify and mark inbound traffic from the Internet, so that it’s prioritized by the rest of your network.

Subnets – Like SfB Server, SfB Online and Teams use subnets and their associated locations in a couple of spots: e911/emergency calling locations, and for Call Quality analytics and reporting. If you don’t know your exact subnets (NO SUPERNETTING!), and the areas they serve, start documenting this. If you have subnets that span locations, plan to remedy this. Spanning floors is sorta okay in a small building, but inter-building spanning is a bad thing. While e911 dynamic location isn’t turned on yet (it’s complicated, and involves life safety. And lawyers), you’ll want things ship-shape when it is.

Policies – Teams uses many other O365 services, and they include a variety of policies for things like naming, compliance, and deactivation. You need to understand what these are, and how they work, so that you can support your organization in making sound decisions. And because at the end of the day, if you don’t, you’re the ones who will have to clean up a mess of Teams with bad names and no expiration or lifecycle.

Internet Connectivity – Centralized Internet is a bad thing for Teams and SfBO. This forces traffic from branches to have to transit your WAN ($) to a central Internet breakout, then off to the Cloud. The extra distance traveled also leads to quality issues. Central Internet breakout is sorta okay in a municipal area, worse within a country, and terrible between countries. If your security department is arguing against this, you can always configure policies to allow Teams traffic locally and send Bob and Sally’s web traffic to the central breakout.

Become friends with this webpage that details the URLs and IP ranges for various O365 services.

You should fire up the bandwidth calculator often. And maybe do a Network Readiness Assessment.

How about a handy Network Assessment Tool.

And who doesn’t want Success with Teams? So get started with Skype and Teams!