skype
Now that it’s legal troubles are apparently behind it, and separation from eBay is near, Skype is free to move aggressively into new opportunities, especially the nascent SIP trunking industry.
Skype’s presence on the show floor at November’s VoiceCon event underscored it’s desire to grow its efforts to target business customers. While Skype has had a business program for several years, it has mostly been focused on giving companies the ability to centrally manage a group of individual Skype user accounts. More recently, Skype has aggressively entered the SIP trunking market via it’s Skype for SIP platform, as well Skype for Asterisk in partnership with Digium.
Skype is positioning it’s SIP trunking offering as a way for enterprises to bypass the PSTN and instead use Skype’s network to carry long distance calls. In addition, Skype customers will be able to place or receive calls to/from the tens of millions of active Skype users.
Skype continues to grow its partner ecosystem. In addition to Digium, Skype has announced interoperability with ShoreTel’s VOIP system, Cisco’s UC 500 SMB product, and integration of Skype audio calling capabilities into LifeSize’s Passport video conferencing product. (Avaya customers can interface with Skype through VoSKY’s PBX-to-Skype platform, certified to work with Avaya Communications Manager).
Skype’s efforts compete directly with SIP trunking services offered by a growing number of service providers, adding the ability for certified phone systems to place or receive calls directly to/from Skype clients. Skype’s efforts arguably represent an effort to create an alternate phone system riding on top of the Internet (which is a bit amusing given that the Internet started life running over a network designed for voice).
IT architects evaluating SIP trunking as a way to reduce PSTN access costs would be wise to evaluate Skype as part of their SIP trunking planning, and to involve customer service, sales, and marketing groups to determine potential benefits gained by supporting direct connectivity to Skype’s large and growing user population.
