Om Malik let Jesse Kopelman onto his blog with a guest post on "Skype as the Next Generation PBX. Jesse's written and commented before there. Many of you may have read the post on Om's blog. My two cents. Great post, yet it isn't going far enough on the implications for social networking services, and two, it fails to really spell out the opportunity access to millions of profiles provides.

What are the benefits of a PBX? The most common are things like voicemail, being able call the other people on the PBX for free, and the cost savings of being able to efficiently share a smaller number of lines than users. Funny how those things are pretty much what you get from using Skype. What is more, most PBX/Centrex users have fancy phones that let them have multiple simultaneous calls and make it easy to conference calls together – functionality found in the Skype client.

Skype goes beyond the traditional PBX features with its support for IM and ability to share contact information with other applications. These features are exactly the selling points of the newest software based PBX systems. The IM thing especially, as it ties into something called “presence.” The thing that gives Skype a huge advantage over say the latest Avaya PBX is that you automatically get the advantage of having millions of existing users on the same “PBX” as you and it costs nothing to add more.

If Skype can get companies to realize the benefits of extending PBX functionality to employees working from home or on the road, those companies would surely be willing to pay for the service. There is also the whole issue of why upgrade to that new PBX platform Avaya is selling when you get something that offers the same features, costs less per month, and works outside of the office.

Om Malik - Gigaom