Skype today announced that they are moving from a peer-to-peer module to a more modern cloud infrastructure which would allow for a better Skype experience across multiple kinds of devices.
Due to this shift towards the cloud, Skype says it would have to leave some older devices and platforms behind (which includes Windows Phone 8 alongside various OS versions of iOS and Android).
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 has also spoken about various bugs that have been plaguing it’s users recently, such as notifications not syncing across devices and messages being received hours after being sent. The company says this is a result of the platform slowly being transitioned over to the cloud following which, the bugs should be fixed.
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, Skype also said:
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.
Skype’s future certainly looks bright ahead and with it’s latest commitment towards making it’s services more reliable and user friendly, our readers should be really feeling happy.
What do you think about Skype’s future? Let us know in the comments section.
