Microsoft has unveiled its plans for the future of the Skype platform today, announcing that they are slowly transitioning over from a peer-to-peer module to a far more modern cloud infrastructure, which allows Skype to work better across multiple kinds of devices.
Because of the transition to the cloud, Skype is having to leave some older, legacy devices and platforms behind:
The pace of change in our industry means that the devices and operating systems used by the majority of people shifts with time. Our commitment to deliver the best possible cross-platform experiences requires that we continually assess when it's time to increase our focus on the platforms of the future. Sometimes this means that we must end support for some devices and operating systems.
Skype says they will continue to support Windows 7, 8, XP and Vista, Yosemite on Mac, iOS 8 and Android 4.03 operating systems, and obviously Windows 10 and Windows 10 Mobile. So if you're using a relatively new operating system, you're good to go.
Microsoft has also spoken about the number of bugs many Skype users have been experiencing recently, such as notifications not syncing across devices and messages popping up hours after they are sent. The company says this is a result of the platform slowly being transitioned over to the cloud, and once that transition is complete, these bugs should be ironed out.
The transition has been ongoing for a while and isn't complete quite yet. The team is working hard to ensure that our users can continue to use Skype smoothly throughout the transition. At times, unforeseen issues have cropped up, like messages not syncing across devices, or notifications not being delivered reliably. Knowing the impact of these issues for our users, we fix these issues as quickly as we can. We do ask all our users to update Skype to ensure they benefit from our latest fixes and improvements and to enable a smooth transition to the cloud.
Finally, Microsoft closes out with a promise to commit to Skype where users want it:
By focusing our efforts on the devices and operating systems where the majority of our users are, we can concentrate our efforts on what's most important such as call quality and new features. In the future, Skype will continue to support our newly released lighter, faster and more responsive UWP app for Windows 10, Skype for iPhone, iPad and Android as well as a web-based native version of Skype for other supported platforms like Linux, Mac and previous Windows operating systems which will benefit from the latest ORTC or WebRTC technology that we've been working on for the last year.
So, there's a lot going on with Skype right now, with Microsoft recently launching its new Skype UWP preview for Windows 10 Mobile users and an updated online web version. Skype says the transition to the cloud should be complete over the next few months, so very exciting times ahead.
