Skype ramps up its offerings for businesses

Skype expands Skype for Business

VoIP, unified messaging, products and services

Skype announced last week that it is expanding its “Skype for Business” offer. The current Skype for business offer already includes Skype-to-Skype (PC-to-PC calls), video call capability, SkypeOut (allowing callers to place outgoing off-net calls), SkypeIn (allowing off-net callers to reach a Skype subscriber), conference calling, file transfer and chat.

The additions to Skype’s current business service provide:

* Enterprisewide installation controls, allowing the telecom manager to install Skype on multiple computers with a Windows Installer package.

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Skype announced last week that it is expanding its “Skype for Business” offer. The current Skype for business offer already includes Skype-to-Skype (PC-to-PC calls), video call capability, SkypeOut (allowing callers to place outgoing off-net calls), SkypeIn (allowing off-net callers to reach a Skype subscriber), conference calling, file transfer and chat.

The additions to Skype’s current business service provide:

* Enterprisewide installation controls, allowing the telecom manager to install Skype on multiple computers with a Windows Installer package.

* An enhanced online business control panel which gives enterprisewide control of allocating SkypeIn phone numbers and SkypeOut credits.

* IT management tools to remotely configure Skype client features.

Skype is also working with third-party partners to deploy:

* Convenos Meeting Center (for on-demand Web conferencing and collaboration).

* WebDialogs Unyte (which allows users to share anything on their PC desktop anytime).

* On-State ACD (a call center and customer contact solution).

And for those of us who always thought of Skype as more of a consumer-oriented service, the company also surprised us when it said in its announcement that business users make up more than 30% of Skype’s global users. Skype has more than 171 million registered users.

The company also noted in its press release that “Skype is not a replacement for your traditional telephone service and cannot be used for emergency calling.”

Our question to readers: Do YOU think that Skype might be a replacement for traditional telephone services in the enterprise in the future? We think not — we don’t think that the Internet will replace business phone networks. But then again we remember the days when Internet access was more a novelty than a business necessity. We’d welcome your opinions on the topic — especially if you’ve been a subscriber to Skype’s business services. We’d be happy to publish you thoughts.

Read more about voip & convergence in Network World's VoIP & Convergence section.

Steve Taylor is president of Distributed Networking Associates and publisher/editor-in-chief of Webtorials. Larry Hettick is a principal analyst at Current Analysis.