I have been very fortunate to have been given the opportunity to attend Ignite 2017 in sunny Orlando Florida, its my first time at ignite and all I can say is WOW.

It’s a great opportunity to network, meet those faces you see everyday online and just get a much better understanding of all products at a deep dive level.

I have just attended a session on Skype vNext, or as we now know Skype for Business Server 2019, the purpose of this post was to provide you all with the content that was shared and give you an insight into what’s coming;

For those customers that have invested in Server, you aren’t being forgotten about! Now would be a good idea to start to think about that shift to the Cloud of UC communications but there be at least (maybe maximum!) one more on premise server iteration – Skype for Business Server 2019

So, from Mid-2018, we can start to expect to see Office 2019 clients with a view to release, Late 2018. One big announcement was the fact that these clients will support a minimum of Windows 10 and will be available on in the C2R format

Skype for Business Server 2019

• IT Pro and Voice Centric Release
• Improved Teams Interoperability
• Refreshed mainstream support
• Quality Security and Performance fixes
• Refreshed clients
• Improved MAC client, finish the story
• C2R clients

SfB 2019 Client will be backwards compatible with the Skye for Business Server 2015 AND Lync Server 2013 – allowing for deployment of new office clients and desktops OSes in parallel to server planning

Deployment Requirements (important!)

High level deployment requirements were released and included some significant announcements:

• Lync Server 2013 and Skype for Business Server 2015 support SIDE BY SIDE migration to Server 2019
• SfB Server 2019 requires a minimum of Windows 2016 and SQL 2016
• No Standard Edition in the next release
• No in place upgrades,
• Director Role has been dropped (although you could setup an empty EE pool and let it perform your auth and 301s)
• The Online code effectively has been brought down and used as the basis for SfB Server 2019

Hybrid Value in 2019 Server

• Don’t need to home users online but you do need a tenant!
• We can give the on-premise users some of the same experiences
  • Same with admin experiences too
• We will see a new hybrid Aware Office 365 Portal
• Single portal for all Call analytics and reporting, one portal for all users, tailored
  • Teams users, SfB Server 2019 and SfBO users
• Voicemail, Auto Attendants and Call queues, integrated with SfB Server 2019
  • Reduced Exchange Server dependency
• Support for Hybrid Modern Auth (that’s already here)
• Ensure interop between SfB and Teams with migration paths
• Server 2019 will connect to the online portal to provide consistency
  • The new portal is hybrid aware

Meeting Migration Service

• Scheduled meeting update service – replaces meeting migration tool
• Works for users moving to SfBO from Server
• Works for users adding PSTN conferencing to SfBO
• Update for ignite: Users mailbox can be Exchange online or Server

SkypePreviews.com:

Now:

• MMS with Exchange Server 2016
• Hybrid Modern Auth

Coming Soon:

• Customer Surveys for SfB Server 2019 – late 2017
• SfB Server 2019 preview bits – Mid 2018

Stay tuned for more updates straight from Ignite 2017!