Skype Journal: VON Boston and Skype Night in California
September 18, 2005 06:12 PMThis is Voice over the Net week. It will be a newsy week. Stuart, Phil and Martin will be attending VON Boston. Niklas Z. will deliver the keynote as usual. I will be attending Skype Night in California. Yes, Niklas Z. will be delivering the welcome address there too. An interesting week; lots for a blogger’s plate. Stay tuned-in to Skype Journal. We have many informative posts to keep you Skypelanders at the leading edge.
Here is a taste of what is to come this week…
VON Boston, VON Europe, VON Canada. Who goes to VON? It’s the people who “charge for calls”. Who gives the keynote? The inventor of free calls, Niklas Z. Now that is convoluted!
How does a consumer product fit into a VON Conference? Well, consumers are a large part of the Telco market. And many consumers are hanging up on their Telco and calling free on Skype. And Skype tells us that over 40 percent of their users report that they use Skype both for business and personal reasons.
This spring, at VON Canada, Niklas Z. predicted 2005 would be a Skype Wi-Fi year. I predict 2006 will be a year Skype makes a big leap into SME (Small and medium enterprise). We have all heard about large enterprises from Dell to your local Electrical Utility outsourcing basic administrative functions to large off shore Call Centres to reduce costs. These Call Centres are for the most part VoIP based. Now this capability will be available for the SME.
Driving this move of Skype into the SME are several emerging technologies─
1. Skype Groups, allowing one administrator to centrally manage SkypeOut accounts. This makes SkypeOut and Skype in much more friendly for small business or to use the vernacular of eBay ─Skype Groups reduces friction for the SME.
2. SkypeIn and Call Forward have been released as beta products. The full implication of what a small business can accomplish with these has yet to be realized. (I will discuss this in a post tomorrow). And the development community is pushing Skype to release a Call Transfer function.
3. Second generation USB chips from Asia. Such CMedia, Sonix and Smartlink These chips will power PBX 2 Skype Gateways. Just about every SME has a PBX. (I will discuss more on Skype2PBX in a post on Tuesday)
4. SkypeWeb, will bring Skype presence on a PBX to corporate directories and web pages making it easier to connect to buyers and sellers. (I hope to cover this topic on Wednesday)
Visibility creates pull. The eBay purchase of Skype brought an enormous business media splash for Skype. Some 3000 entries show up in a Google news search for eBay + Skype. Making Skype more credible outside the consumer space Skype occupies now.
Skype Night in California is Thursday. Get to meet with Skype 3rd Party staffers Lenn Pryor and Lester Madden. International Marketing Manager Melany Libraro, Nils Hammer of BizDev and John Hammink who heads up the Certification Group.
The final frontier for the SME will be Skype Video (coming soon). What role will video play in B2B? I think it will be big. On Friday, I will accept an invitation to visit Logitech to review their incredible new family of Web Cams.
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Well, are we gonna get a write up about Skype Night in CA?
Posted by: Steve at September 24, 2005 11:59 PM