Why Skype Doesn’t Scale – Part 2!

I want to say a big thanks to the recent comments on my recent post, “Why Skype Doesn’t Scale.” In the interest of continuing the discussion, I have a few more ideas and viewpoints to share about the subject. First of all, it’s very important to consider the entire telecommunications landscape in today’s world. Indeed, the telecom “culture” has been moving in the way of mobile communications, namely cell phones. However, the business environment has not simply dropped their existing telecom infrastructures (PBXs, etc) in adaptation to the “cell phone culture.” Instead, we’ve seen the integration of mobile devices into the existing infrastructures. Now, we have features such as mobile twinning, enterprise mobility, etc. Skype, and the peer-to-peer “informal” methods of communication have become more prevalent. At this stage, Skype and similar technologies are still in infancy, similar to the early cell-phone-culture. When we consider the However, we similarly have not seen a mass transition away from “traditional” communication systems towards platforms such as Skype. To address the previous comments on security, I like to compare the Skype infrastructure to a black box. We know what goes in, and comes out, but we don’t have the details on what translations occur in the middle. When I’m charged with operating a mission critical voice environment, I want to have as much knowledge as possible up until the call hits the PSTN. I realize that this type of infrastructure is more complicated, but it’s the granular control that allows for customization, scalability, and problem solving. What we have seen, is how Skype successfully compliments existing methods of communication. Not a supplement, but a compliment. When I’m sitting in a hotel room, I don’t pickup the phone in the room – I use Skype. In contrast, when I’m at my desk and need to contact a coworker, I don’t use Skype, but I dial their extension from my SIP phone. Thank you again to those who previously commented – I absolutely appreciate the thoughts!