Skype for SIP Beta now open to all Businesses

Ten thousand businesses asked for Skype for SIP when it launched in March. Eight months later the SFS Beta is now open to all users with business Skype names. Anyone with a business control panel, a corporate Skype name subject to the business terms of service and EULA, and a business SkypeIn phone number can now use Skype for SIP.

I talked Monday with Skype's Matthew Jordan about the latest update. Here are the details.

Skype for SIP connects your company's phone switch to Skype. SkypeIn and Skype-to-Skype calls come in to your phone system, outbound calls can go over SkypeOut. VoIP people call a connection between your phone system and a phone company a "trunk." Some people call Skype for SIP "Skype trunking."

SFS is a limited add-on.

• No emergency dialing: You still need a regular phone service to dial police, fire, ambulance.
• No phone number portability. You need a Skype Online Number and you don’t get to use an existing number.
• Service levels aren’t regulated by local or government authorities or guaranteed by Skype.

SFS isn’t free. US$ 6.95 per month for each channel, one call at a time per channel. You have to rent an Online Skype phone number for your business. You pay for SkypeOut at published rates. At the moment, the Skype Global Rate is 2.1¢/minute in more than 36 countries. You'll pay more for mobiles in most places. Unlike SkypeOut for consumers, Skype doesn't allow or offer flat-rate calling plans. Calls coming in to your phone from the Skype ecosystem are free.

Many smart phone systems let you write rules for routing outbound calls. You might choose SkypeOut for international calls or if you haven't the buying power to negotiate discounts with your phone company.

Skype is building a distribution channel. They've partnered with PBX makers like ShoreTel, Cisco, and SIPfoundry. Together they have thousands of value added resellers (VARs) who serve local businesses. Those resellers will be eligible to earn affiliate referral commissions from Skype, although a separate program for VARs is not in place. Skype is talking with more PBX makers to make adding a Skype channel a built-in menu option.

Skype for SIP is an indirect sales effort. SFS partners with PBX makers, their VARs, to reach IT and telecom departments responsible for configuring telephone systems and buying telephone services.

So Skype gets to know your Phone Guy. This gives Skype a beachhead in your company, a relationship to sell more Skype products, and a champion for Skype technology.

For many institutions, it is much easier to buy more from an established vendor than a new one. This makes it easier for the rest of the org to adopt Skype.

In addition to your phone team, SFS is attractive for remote workers. They can Skype to your company phones for free. It can be as simple as adding your company switchboard as a Skype contact.

Your sales, marketing, and customer service teams may also like SFS. If you want to add Skype click-to-call to your web site, SFS lets you reach worldwide Skype users without running up your phone bill. It lets your prospects and customers Skype, the way they want to. And you get to keep your call center gear and software.

Skype for SIP builds with Skype's current suppliers. Skype is one of the world's largest buyers of PSTN termination and origination services. These suppliers connect Skype to public phone networks. In a very real sense, Skype is a middleman, a retailer buying PSTN at wholesale and selling it to individuals and companies. These same suppliers connect SkypeOut services for all of Skype. Because of this, there should be no issues with scaling Skype for SIP.

There are a few barriers to Skype for SIP adoption. SkypeOut prices are not competitive in many markets. Small businesses don’t know how to configure phone switches for telecom services that aren't built in to the switch. Small businesses only change phone services rarely, often when buying new hardware. The telecom VARs don’t know about Skype for SIP, Skype’s affiliate programs, or how to support their customers who want to buy or use Skype.

What’s in it for Skype?

Easy billable minutes. Skype can earn a small, growing share of the $billions companies pay to local, long distance, and international phone carriers. Skype could earn a share of the whole company’s spend before winning individual hearts and minds or getting Skype installed on company desktops and mobiles. More paid minutes means more buying power over Skype’s suppliers. This is a very high return on a very small Skype team.

What will Skype learn?

How to support and lead a channel. While not a new capability at Skype, Skype has never been strong in this area.

Skype will accumulate a massive business call data record (CDR) database. They'll be able to mine the data for behavior patterns to help them design new business products, uncover new ways to find future Skype customers, understand how company telecom departments shop and buy.

What's in Skype for SIP's future?

Potentially there will be free calls to other SFS customers; Skype doesn’t need to pay termination fees. Subscription plans for business, if they helps companies choose Skype. Tools to help telecom administrators manage SFS channel capacity ("You’re at capacity 94% this month. Add a channel?").

Skype for SIP will soon put $20 million per month in Skype's hands. But this anonymous, hidden, back-door Skype product endangers Skype's brand and the trust we have in it: Skype For SIP: Big Money, Skypeless, Brand Destroyer.

tags: skype, skypeforsip, business, sip, voip, telecom, telephony, voice

Call me at +1-510-316-9773, Skype me, follow @skypejournal and @Phil Wolff.
Visit our Skype Journal private technologist roundtable, one of the longest running public Skype chats.

Skype For Sip Beta Opens to Everyone

View more documents from evanwolf.

See also on Skype Journal:

• Skype For SIP: Big Money, Skypeless, Brand Destroyer. Skype could be hurting its brand, reducing confidence in its security and privacy pledges, and Skype's value as a rich collaboration and communication network.
• Dan York on "Skype and SIP"; Input for Skype's Platform Ambitions?
• SIP -- The Promise, The Reality and The Potential
• The Skype for Asterisk Story -- Significant Details
• Skype for SIP == Skype for Asterisk DOA?

Skype news roundup: CNN ad deal, AOL open to interop, $50 IPEVO speakerphone

Products:

Skype for iPhone: Now Legally Available for Canadians. Congratulations, Canada! tip: type (flag:ca) in Skype chat.

Skype For Asterisk "is available to download now from Digium for $66 USD per concurrent call or from Digium Authorized Resellers and Distributors worldwide, and comes with 90 days of installation support from the time of purchase."

Skype For SIP channels are on sale for € 19.95  per month (without VAT – EUR) plus Skype's standard per minute call rates (no country, global calling plans).

ASUS Eee Reader could be built for Skype video calls, near the £100 mark. via Times Online.

IPEVO TR-10i speakerphone is now $49.99. Value hat tip to Michael Rose.

Business:

Skype to run ads on CNN's Connect the World show. Off-air chats to follow.

Om interviews Brad Garlinghouse, formerly the Yahoo! exec who owned Yahoo! Messenger, lately an in-house advisor at Silver Lake Partners (soon to own 50%+ of Skype), and soon to be president of AOL's email and AIM service. Interop with Skype is on the table. Mmmmm, peanut butter!

Exabytes per month worldwide in our mobile broadband future. 1,000,000,000,000,000,000 bytes. How much will be people lifestreaming video? Skype video multicasting?

tags: skype, asterisk, iphone, canada, sip, asus, eee, ipevo, cnn, exabytes, bradgarlinghouse

Call me at +1-510-316-9773, Skype me, follow @skypejournal and @Phil Wolff.
Visit our Skype Journal private roundtable, one of the longest running public Skype chats.

Add Directory: A Thing I Really Want from Skype for Business

Intranet and Extranet Directory Service.

I love that Skype lets me import my Google and Outlook contacts (at least those with phone numbers). That's not enough.

In the world of work I need to see my company's phone book. Not a snapshot, imported months ago, but the latest version.

• Add directory. Let me add my company directory to my contacts by reference. So I'm always looking at the latest version. This also relieves me from adding all three million people who work for my organization one at a time. Or keeping up with all the adds, moves, and changes.
• Add another directory. Frankly, I really want to be able to add "white page" and "yellow page" directories from partner, supplier, and customer organizations. At the same time.
• Find people. Let me search my company directory using the same search I use for the Skype network. It would be nice if I could restrict searches to specific directories.
• Departments as "contact categories." Many of us live in a world of hierarchy, orgcharts, and cost centers (centres). How about treating department names as tags? So it's easier to find co-workers and their colleagues?
• Autopopulate profiles. Company directory services are rich with descriptive information. Show it.

This is useful stuff.

So much easier to set up multichats and conference calls without leaving Skype to find all the details.

You can easily see staffing companies like Monster offer private directories of job applicants to a specific job. Or project management software sharing a directory of people assigned to a project.

You'll have to work out de-duplication, lifecycle events, authenticating against LDAP, facebook API, and other directory service protocols. But it's doable. This could convince workers to keep Skype up and connected all day.

 

See also:

• Aliases
• Alias Transfer 
• Provisioning
• Share Aliases

 

Skype is a productivity and collaboration tool, well suited for the workplace. Millions of people use Skype at work. Skype for Business is a Skype team and product family serving small and large organizations.

tags: skype

Call me at +1-510-455-4384, follow @skypejournal and @Phil Wolff. Ask for an invitation to the Skype Journal private roundtable.

Skype for Business: Interop2009 video

Stefan Öberg spoke at Interop 2009 last month, as Jim Courtney reported and Öberg blogged.

Two key takeaways.

First, Skype plans to formalize and extend its premium (prioritized queue, private resources) online customer support for enterprises and to deliver local language, in-country customer support through channel partners.

Last, Stefan said survey results show Skype is making its way into US and UK workplaces.

The slides go by very fast, so here are screenshots on from the Stefan Öberg's Skype for Business presentation at Interop 2009 flickr set. The comments below are mine.

hmmm. "The future of business communications" is a pretty big scope.

Not much new about the consumerization of IT. Been going on for generations. Mobile phones were smuggled in. Wi-Fi, Macs, even PCs were first brought to work by employees. Here's a 2005 Gartner release saying "Consumerization Will Be Most Significant Trend Affecting IT During Next 10 Years."

Tough times call for desperate measures. Even "consumer grade" tools will do if they save lots of money.

We do have lots of connectivity, for now. Good enough for Skype video calls.

Not just by IT employees but by everyone. Darned employees, using strange software and connectivity in ways we didn't plan.

 

We have one life, and we spend it at home, at school, and working. Our tools are becoming closer to us, less tied to or provided by our employers.

Presence will be matter when people stop lying about their availability. Skype's presence service only lets you set one presence message for everyone. Yet you might be available to your best customer and not available for Bob from the accounting department.

More stats... 

Oh, and Skype Lite is coming out for the Blackberry this month.

Harder questions: What percent of smartphone users in the UK and US have ever downloaded an application? What percentage of smartphones sold in the US and UK will come with Skype preloaded?

Less integrated than bolted on or sitting next to your existing workflow. With a few limited exceptions, you cannot build Skype into an enterprise application. Unless you consider Outlook an enterprise workflow app.

Of the nine applications shown above, five were made by Skype, and three were made by one Skype developer. Not exactly a robust ecosystem. 

The "tools" talking points are real accomplishments, although far from complete. Skype offers a version specifically for easy configuration (networking options and feature crippling) by IT. The readable admin guide to Skype has been useful in explaining how to make Skype installations conform to company security policies and assert control over users. Skype's business control panel is a first stab at letting companies manage user accounts and distribute account funds.

"Enhanced service" as used here means customer service and technical support. Interoperability, well, Skype's not there yet but it's nice to hear executives acknowledge it as an opportunity.

The closing slides say Skype is good wherever you work (office, travelling, at home).

Critique: A friend in the audience told me it was too salesy for the Interop IT crowd. Everyone there knew Skype already and they generally appreciate live demos more than PowerPoint. I tend to agree. The best parts of the talk were the hard numbers and the real world stories of companies putting Skype to work. Using real company names and showing photos or video of people using the tools at work would have been more meaningful.

See also:

• Voice On The Web: Skype’s Stefan Öberg @ Interop: Stealthing Skype Into Business, But Cover the Entire Skype Ecosystem
• Gartner: Consumerization: The IT Civil War.
• Ars Technica: Analysis: IT consumerization and the future of work(2008). "'IT consumerization' is one of the more unwieldy buzzwords to come down the pike in some time, which is a shame, because there's definitely something to it. Here's a look at three factors that contribute to the IT consumerization trend, and at what this trend may mean for the future of how we work."

tags: skype, interop, interop2009, interop09, vegas, lasvegas, skypeforbusiness, business, enterprise, stats, statistics, trends, consumerization

Call me at +1-510-455-4384, Skype me, follow @skypejournal and @Phil Wolff.
Visit our Skype Journal private roundtable, one of the longest running public Skype chats.

Skype Rates and Least Cost Routing

Guest post by Jason Goecke, Adhearsion

Now that Skype is coming to the enterprise with Skype for Asterisk and Skype for SIP, they will need to enhance the data available for their calling rates. Enabling Least Cost Routing (LCR) is a must for any VoIP provider to the enterprise. LCR allows a phone system to determine, on a call by call basis, which VoIP provider to use based on the best rates associated to the country code or prefix being dialed.

As of now Skype publishes a web page of calling rates based on the country name and the per minute rate including or excluding the tax. A few additional items are needed to make this usable for LCR systems:

• The associated country code for each country (i.e. - ‘34′ for Spain, ‘1′ for the US, etc)
• More granular prefixes where calling rates may differ (i.e. - ‘346′ for Spanish mobiles, ‘336′ for French mobiles, ‘1212′ for NYC, ‘1712′ for Iowa, etc)
• Billing intervals
• A file download in CSV, or similar format, for import into LCR systems

Of course, in the meantime it is easy enough to scrape the website and convert the available data into a more appropriate format. Here is an example, in Ruby, of how this may be done in a trivial way:

1. require 'rubygems'
2. require 'open-uri'
3. require 'nokogiri'
4. require 'json'
6. skype_rates = Hash.new
7. skype_url = 'http://www.skype.com/prices/callrates/#allRatesTab'
8. skype_htmldoc = Nokogiri::Hpricot(open(skype_url).read) 
9. (skype_htmldoc/'table.listing//tr.r1').each do |country| 
10.   country_name = country.at('td').inner_html 
11.   skype_rates.merge!({ country_name => { 'amount' => country.at('span.amount').inner_html.split('<!')[0].gsub('$ ', '').to_f, 
12. 'vat' => country.at('span.vat').inner_html.split('<!')[0].gsub('$ ', '').to_f } }) 
13. end
15. p skype_rates.to_json 

Which produces JSON output as follows:

1. { 
2. "Bolivia-La Paz": { 
3. "amount":0.122, 
4. "vat":0.14 
5.   }, 
6. "Sweden - Mobile": { 
7. "amount":0.292, 
8. "vat":0.336 
9.   }, 
10. "Hong Kong": { 
11. "amount":0.021, 
12. "vat":0.024 
13.   } 
14. } 

You may then perform a Regular Expression against another data source to derive the appropriate country codes/prefixes and store those in your LCR system. A good example of the additional detail needed is provided by Flowroute.

I have on my list of actions to create an Adhearsion component to provide LCR capabilities for any Adhearsion application. The plan is to support a wide number of VoIP providers and other data inputs as a part of this plug-in.

In the meantime, it will be interesting to see how Skype goes about publishing their rates with additional details and formats for download.

UPDATE @JimCanuck points out it is not just about least cost, but also about quality of termination. Skype has some interesting approaches to call quality. More here.

tags: skype, lcr, cost, routing, asterisk, adhearsion, voip

Call me at +1-510-455-4384, Skype me, follow @skypejournal and @Phil Wolff.
Visit our Skype Journal private roundtable, one of the longest running public Skype chats.

Community Wishlist: Skype Chat to Email Listserv gateway

@PacificIT community leader Robert Sanzalone and I have been chatting about Skype and its use as social software. Robert penned this blogworthy bit that started about a Skype client on the iPhone. Robert:

As you saw me mention, I have literally been OFF SKYPE waiting for this client to appear from SOMEONE and it still hasn't arrived.

About half a dozen apps exist to do various basic functions of Skype such as one-to-one text and voice. A few can now also connect with the Skype Out/In services as well.

With the recent development of the latest client focusing on video, it looks once again that "sexy" wins over practicality and what is really needed to keep this service at the front line. I'm almost expecting announcements for new deals with Friendster and Plaxo any day now (yes, it's that bad).

Regardless, my hope is time, money and effort isn't being put into making a VIDEO CLIENT for the iPhone before group chat is solved. I think building community around the client is far more important and the fans keep coming even though Skype seems to be telling them to go away.

My alternative challenge to the community is to look at other common technologies which can bridge this gap.

My crosshairs are on email. Understood and common.

One of the most attractive features of Chatterous was the ability to completely interact in a dynamic IM group discussion exclusively by email. It was (and is) amazing.

BUT.. the name recognition and trust is not as well established as Skype. I PERSONALLY found out people would rather stay with the tried and true recognized name than to move a whole community to a platform or service no one has heard of or is interested in experimenting with.

How to interact with email?

Again, the lesson comes from Chatterous. Essentially, you can choose how to have digested messages sent from a group chat to your email account which you can then react to, or not.

The email sent in completely blends in with the rest of the chat. I was amazed even with the latency of tapping out an email minutes after the initial digest was sent me that the conversation wasn't completely backward (since there are frequent delays, even with real time IM chats).

Now, apply this capability to a mobile device with email capability, and you have the whole issues of a "Skype group chat client" solved. You CAN interact with a group chat even without a specific client on the iPhone, or ANY mobile device anywhere in the world. A sweet solution.

Though I'm not a developer, I'm told time and time again the API in Skype does give the ability to make these types of toys. I have no way to verify this one way or another.

All I know is, it's JUST NOT HAPPENING. I was looking for a few smart people to get on the ball and do something about it.

Turn off your darn video cams and let's get the community together first.

tags: skype, email, wishlist, listserv, mailing list, community, collaboration, chatterous, webmail, bbs, chat

Call me at +1-510-455-4384, Skype me, follow @skypejournal and @Phil Wolff.
Visit our Skype Journal private roundtable, one of the longest running public Skype chats.

BCP Management by Role: A Thing I Really Want from Skype for Business

Business Control Panel (BCP) Management by Role.

When a manager leaves the company and takes her Skype account with her, will the company lose access to its control panel? To its funds? To its records? To its control over control panel membership?

BCP "ownership" should belong to a defined role, an alias, perhaps even a shared alias.

A manager, their manager, the telecom manager, someone from HR and someone reporting to the front line manager could share that role.

Skype's current architecture prevents proper:

• Succession
• Delegation
• Supervision
• Audit 

Without management through roles, powered by aliases, Skype's BCP will create problems outside of very tiny, unusually stable organizations.

 

See Things I Really Want from Skype for Business:

• Aliases
• Alias Transfer 
• Provisioning
• Share Aliases 
• Multiple Companies per Account

 

Skype is a productivity and collaboration tool, well suited for workplace. Millions of people use Skype at work. Skype for Business is a Skype team and product family serving small and large organizations.

tags: skype

Call me at +1-510-455-4384, follow @skypejournal and @Phil Wolff. Ask for an invitation to the Skype Journal private roundtable.

Multiple Business Control Panels Per Company: A Thing I Really Want from Skype for Business

Multiple Business Control Panels Per Company.

The power in Skype for Business lies in Skype's Business Control Panel (BCP). The BCP is where Skype gives you fund multiple Skype accounts and manage SkypeIn phone numbers for your organization.

Today, you are allowed only one BCP per company.

It's time to decentralize authority.

• Give authority to managers and team leaders closer to the people who use the service.
• Permit companies to create BCPs to match their formal organizational structure.
• Permit teams to create BCPs to match their informal organizational structure.

Benefits to Skype:

• More customer eyes on spending and activity.
• More awareness by first line managers of Skype and it's uses at work.

Benefits to Business:

• Allows sponsors to respect privacy expectations within a company by limiting the size of BCP membership and visibility of BCP activity data and billing details.
• Roll up aggregate statistics and financials across a company to better understand spending and activity by department.

 

See Things I Really Want from Skype for Business:

• Aliases
• Alias Transfer 
• Provisioning
• Share Aliases 
• Multiple Companies per Account

 

Skype is a productivity and collaboration tool, well suited for workplace. Millions of people use Skype at work. Skype for Business is a Skype team and product family serving small and large organizations.

tags: skype

Call me at +1-510-455-4384, follow @skypejournal and @Phil Wolff. Ask for an invitation to the Skype Journal private roundtable.

Skype for SIP == Skype for Asterisk DOA?

Guest post by Jason Goecke, Adhearsion

Today Skype announced Skype for SIP (SFS). Put simply, enterprise telephone systems may now interconnect with the Skype network to receive calls from the Skype network and place calls to SkypeOut. All without the need to install any special hardware or software on most modern enterprise phone systems (IP-PBXs to be more specific). Skype’s new enterprise targeted connectivity uses SIP, the industry standard for VoIP interconnection. SIP already powers the bulk of Skype’s revenue, via SkypeIn/SkypeOut, so this is a logical progression to take advantage of the large scale infrastructure already in place at Skype.

This is a tremendous move by Skype and one I have contended for years was necessary for them to make headway in the enterprise. I applaud this step. There are plenty of great posts out there covering this already, including the one by @danyork on Disruptive Telephony.

What does this mean for Skype for Asterisk (SFA) announced last September? At best the value of SFA has been significantly reduced by this announcement.

Previously SIP interconnection to the Skype cloud was given to the rarified group of larger players such as Voxeo, Tellme, Genesys and others. SFA was the first time this access was going to be brought to the world of open source telephony developers through Asterisk. This provided an immense opportunity for the Asterisk developer community to create new applications to take advantage of this, which lead me to invest time to participate in the closed beta for SFA still underway.

The SFS announcement this morning has just marginalized SFA to applications that benefit from direct dialing of Skype users from Asterisk and from basic presence updates from the Skype network. Gone are the benefits of providing Skype/SkypeIn inbound calls to the enterprise, SkypeOut trunking, etc. More so, SFA is at a disadvantage since you will have to pay a per channel (simultaneous call) license fee on top of any SkypeIn/SkypeOut costs. Further, I suspect that the number of SFA channels available to a single account will be limited for the same reason that SFS does not do SIP to Skype dialing, so that no one may provide large scale alternatives to SkypeIn.

All of this has really taken the wind out of the SFA sails before it even had a chance to make it to a public beta. Digium must now look to quickly add new features. Such as advanced presence information, instant messaging, the SILK codec and others, if they hope to salvage their own investment in the development of SFA to date. While I understand these things take time, the lethargy of getting the SFA to market does not bode well for rapidly trumping the SFS announcement.

Time will tell.

tags: asterisk, ip-pbx, sfa, sfs, sip, skype, skypeforasterisk, skypeforsip, voiceoverip, VoIP, jasongoecke

Call me at +1-510-455-4384, follow @skypejournal and @Phil Wolff. Ask for an invitation to the Skype Journal private roundtable.

Skype For SIP: Big Money, Skypeless, Brand Destroyer

Skype For SIP (SFS), announced today, is really two Skype for Business services.

And a huge problem.

The services:

Skype-Name-to-SIP-Address. Skype for Business users map one Skype name to one IP address. So people can Skype your Skype name but your SIP PBX rings.

SIP-Switch-to-SkypeOut. Use SkypeOut for all the calls going out of your SIP telephone system. Billed at Skype's typical per-minute rates: higher than what you can buy in bulk, much cheaper than what you get from your local phone company.

Both are controlled through the Skype.com web site and setting on your telephone switch. Business Control Panels let organizations distribute money to multiple Skype accounts.

Between the two parts, SFS gives Skype an excuse to get in front of small business telecom buyers. It offers cost savings and predictability on outbound calling. It provides simple routing of incoming Skype calls to your call center. No hardware beyond your SIP PBX. No software to install. You don't even need to use Skype.

SFS is the second workplace product Skype is launching this year. Skype For Asterisk (SFA), still in closed Beta testing, is Asterisk add-on software running on your Asterisk telephone switch. SFA gives your phone switch the ability to send and recognize Skype instant messages and presence. SFA also lets programmers integrate Skype into other Asterisk programs, like phone trees and speech recognition.

Distribution.

SFS will be distributed on Skype.com and by Skype "service partners", local firms that install and repair phone systems. Service partners will receive commissions from Skype on minutes purchased by customers they refer to Skype. Skype will send referrals to authorized service partners.

Skype does not have a service partner network now. A 2007 project tried to distribute Skype for Business starter packs. 

The Strategic Opportunity.

Skype For SIP home page on launch day, 23 March 2009

Skype is opening doors with SFS.

They're setting up a distribution channel and meeting enterprise IT/telecom people. Skype's brand may entitle it to sell Skype-flavored minutes at a premium. All of this should be good for Skype's sales.

How big is the opportunity?

The normal VC math: 100 partners worldwide (could be 1000 easily) x 100 small companies per partner (could take time) x 1000 minutes/month (an extremely low number) * $0.20 per minute = $2 million/month. This run rate could grow easily to $20 million/month in a year. 

That's the quarter billion dollar per year upside.

The Strategic Downside.

The downside is huge.

Skype For SIP is barren of everything that makes Skype meaningful and invaluable in the workplace.  

Skype is selling cheap, convenient minutes to enterprise plumbers. Legacy audio quality. No audio, video, conferencing, buddy lists, file sharing, presence, or software extensions. SFS is the commoditized low end of VoIP.

With SFS, Skype defines itself to the channel and to its business customers as a "value" provider, helping companies shave pennies, competing with the "minute stealer" industry. While there's money to be had, Skype For SIP

This abandons Skype's central tenets: 

• Be a live, realtime social network.
• Enrich the quality of conversation through higher quality and multiple modes.
• Build Skype Dial Tone by having more individuals log in for more time each day, earning network effects.
• Be the tool people use for workplace collaboration and coordination. 

Skype For SIP is a Skypeless product.

Nobody at a company which uses SFS needs to use Skype. Nobody needs to turn on a client or use an embedded Skype phone or download Skype Lite for a mobile.

In short: SFS undermines Skype's brand.

Warnings for 2009.

• No Emergency Calls. Calls to paramedics, police, and fire will not go through. Standard blocking by the Skype network. So configure your IP-PBX to keep a non-Skype connection open.
• Security sucks. No encryption for now. A Skype spokesperson wrote "at the start of beta, we do not support encryption due to the lack of support among most IP-PBX vendors. We will be adding TLS (encrypted signaling) and SRTP (encrypted media) during the beta period."
• ID Schism sucks. No way for users to tell if a Skype account is a "consumer" or a "business" or a robot account. No way to tell if a Skype user is seeing your IM or your presence or can see your video.
• English-only. One language for the web site and documentation. No internationalization for a while.
• Digital Identity Lifecycle sucks. No way to transfer a Skype account (in the event of M&A, personnel change, for example) or to integrate this with your network/server management systems.
• Only One Skype ID per Company. So if you have more than one trademark, you're out of luck. If you've already secured your trademarked Skype name, you're in worse luck. Only Skype names created through the new service will work. This contradicts what a Skype source told Dan York.

See also:

• Skype Now Means Business, Friends The SIP World, Om Malik, GigaOM
• Skype Targets Businesses to Ring Up New Revenue, Geoffrey A. Fowler, Wall Street Journal
• Skype tears down more walls with "Skype For SIP", Dan York, Disruptive Telephony
• Business Long Distance: Death by 1,000,000 PBX's, Jim Courtney, VooW
• Techmeme coverage.

 

Thanks to Ian Robin, who runs sales and marketing for Skype for Business, for the briefing.

And, as we often do, the full text of the news release.

Skype opens up to corporate SIP communications

New beta program brings Skype voice calling to SIP-based PBX systems

LUXEMBOURG, March 23, 2009 — Skype today announced the beta version of Skype For SIP for Business users. SIP, short for Session Initiation Protocol, is an open standard and the leading voice over Internet protocol used in businesses telephony networks at millions of locations globally. According to IDC, 438,000 IP PBXes were shipped worldwide in 2008.^*

Skype For SIP allows SIP PBX owners to benefit from Skype’s low cost calls to fixed phones and mobiles around the world, and to receive calls from Skype users directly into their PBX system.

Businesses can now be reached by the community of over 405 million Skype registered users through click-to-call from their business Web sites. The calls will be received through their existing office system at no cost to the customer. At the same time, businesses can benefit from Skype’s low-cost global calling rates when placing calls to landlines and mobiles worldwide from devices connected to their PBX systems. In addition, they can choose to purchase online Skype numbers available in over 20 countries to receive calls from business contacts and customers who are using traditional fixed lines or mobile phones.

“The introduction of Skype for SIP is a significant move for Skype and for any communication intensive business around the world,” said Stefan Oberg, VP and General Manager of Skype for Business. “It effectively combines the obvious cost savings and reach of Skype with its large user base, with the call handling functionality, statistics and integration capabilities of traditional office PBX systems, providing great economical savings and increased productivity for the modern business.”

"Businesses have been waiting for Skype to make a concerted push into the business space for a while,” said Rebecca Swensen, IDC’s Research Analyst, Enterprise Mobility and IP Communications Services. “Connecting to existing standards-based SIP PBXes is a good way for Skype to start doing so. It will be interesting to see how large companies change their thinking about the deployment of Skype within the network.”

Key Features

The beta version of Skype For SIP will enable business users to:

• Receive and manage inbound calls from Skype users worldwide on SIP-enabled PBX systems; connecting the company Web site to the PBX system via click-to-call
• Place calls with Skype to landlines and mobile phones worldwide from any connected SIP-enabled PBX; reducing costs with Skype’s low-cost global rates
• Purchase Skype’s online numbers, to receive calls to the corporate PBX from landlines or mobile phones
• Manage Skype calls using their existing hardware and system applications such as call routing, conferencing, phone menus and voicemail; no additional downloads or training are required

How to participate

The Skype For SIP beta program for business users opens today. SIP users, phone system administrators, developers and service partners are invited to apply at www.skypeforsip.com. Applicants will need to be businesses, have an installed SIP based IP-PBX system, as well as a level of technical competency to configure their own SIP-enabled PBX. The initial beta is available to a limited number of participants.

During the beta period all calls will be charged at standard Skype rates. Further pricing details will be announced when the product is fully launched later this year.

tags: sfs, sfa, skype for asterisk, skype for business, skype for sip, sip, skype

Call me at +1-510-455-4384, follow @skypejournal and @Phil Wolff. Ask for an invitation to the Skype Journal private roundtable.

Multiple Companies per Account: A Thing I Really Want from Skype for Business

Multiple Companies Per Account.

A Skype account is a person.

Let me be affiliated with more than one company.

I may have:

• a full time day job,
• bake cookies under my own name,
• help a friend's business on weekends,
• sit on the fundraising committee of my mosque,
• edit my professional association's newsletter, and
• support my kid's virtual lemonade stand.

No place in the real world does someone have just one enterprise affiliation.

We live in a buzzing swarm of many connections and groups.

When you ask people to choose just one, you shove them into the welcoming arms of competitors for every other relationship.

 

See Things I Really Want from Skype for Business:

• Aliases
• Alias Transfer 
• Provisioning
• Share Aliases

 

Skype is a productivity and collaboration tool, well suited for workplace. Millions of people use Skype at work. Skype for Business is a Skype team and product family serving small and large organizations.

tags: skype

Call me at +1-510-455-4384, follow @skypejournal and @Phil Wolff. Ask for an invitation to the Skype Journal private roundtable.

Share Aliases: A Thing I Really Want from Skype for Business

Sharing Aliases.

Nobody works 24 hours a day.

Companies still need to serve customers all day, every day.

They do this by sharing roles.

• On call neurosurgeon for a hospital.
• Help desk operator.
• Even the receptionist who takes a lunch break needs to hand off the role to another person.

The virtual equivalent:

• multiple people
• with their unique Skype accounts (account=person)
• able to share and use
• one or more common aliases (alias=role).

Let workers share roles and responsibilities through a Skype alias.

 

See Things I Really Want from Skype for Business:

• Aliases
• Alias Transfer 
• Provisioning

 

Skype is a productivity and collaboration tool, well suited for workplace. Millions of people use Skype at work. Skype for Business is a Skype team and product family serving small and large organizations.

tags: skype

Call me at +1-510-455-4384, follow @skypejournal and @Phil Wolff. Ask for an invitation to the Skype Journal private roundtable.

Provisioning: A Thing I Really Want from Skype for Business

Integrate and automate provisioning of Skype business control panel (BCP), Skype account, and Skype aliases.

So you spend hundreds of thousands of dollars a quarter on per-seat-licenses for email, accounting, virtualization, commerce, manufacturing systems, tech support, operating systems, security systems, HR software, and the home-grown systems that make your business work.

Provisioning systems automate user account lifecycles across all those systems. You'll want to support lifecycles for:

• Skype accounts
• Skype aliases
• Skype control panels and company

Skype must integrate with the top provisioning products to make provisioning fast, cheap, reliable, thorough and automatic.

 

See also:

• Aliases
• Alias Transfer 
• Provisioning
• Share Aliases

 

Skype is a productivity and collaboration tool, well suited for workplace. Millions of people use Skype at work. Skype for Business is a Skype team and product family serving small and large organizations.

tags: skype

Call me at +1-510-455-4384, follow @skypejournal and @Phil Wolff. Ask for an invitation to the Skype Journal private roundtable.

Alias Transfer: A Thing I Really Want from Skype for Business

Transferability of Aliases.

I wear many hats at work. A Skype account's aliases should hold all my hats.

I should be able to:

• define a role (the person who orders office supplies, for example),
• use it (call and IM suppliers, build a contact list of suppliers, accumulate a call/chat history), and
• hand it off to another person when I'm no longer in that role.

This preserves continuity of relationships so work is not interrupted when I change roles or change jobs.

Enterprises spend billions and mount great efforts to define workflows that survive an individual's path through the organization. Skype, even with aliases, will break proven and well-automated roles, relationships, and contact channels if Skype aliases cannot be transferred as needed.

Web domains can be transferred. Email accounts can be transferred.

Let me easily get and give my aliases to other Skype users. 

 

See also:

• Aliases
• Alias Transfer 
• Provisioning
• Share Aliases

 

Skype is a productivity and collaboration tool, well suited for workplace. Millions of people use Skype at work. Skype for Business is a Skype team and product family serving small and large organizations.

tags: skype

Call me at +1-510-455-4384, follow @skypejournal and @Phil Wolff. Ask for an invitation to the Skype Journal private roundtable.

Aliases: A Thing I Really Want from Skype for Business

Aliases (Multiple Skype Names per Skype Account).

Multiple custom profiles per Skype user account.

I need one for my external customers, another for my team, another for external suppliers and partners. Also, my boss doesn't need to know I'm GorgonTheDestroyer in Warcraft, my clan doesn't need to know I collect taxes for HMRC.

Each alias should have its own profile, presence, permissions, history.

My account should give me a view of all of my aliases.

My account should come with two default aliases: @work, @life.

Let me log in once and present myself well in each context.

 

See Things I Really Want from Skype for Business:

• Aliases
• Alias Transfer 
• Provisioning
• Share Aliases

 

Skype is a productivity and collaboration tool, well suited for workplace. Millions of people use Skype at work. Skype for Business is a Skype team and product family serving small and large organizations.

tags: skype

Call me at +1-510-455-4384, follow @skypejournal and @Phil Wolff. Ask for an invitation to the Skype Journal private roundtable.

Skype for Asterisk component for Adhearsion

Guest post by Jason Goecke, Adhearsion

After having more time to work in detail with the Skype for Asterisk (SFA) channel in closed beta, I have developed an Adhearsion component to ease my development and testing efforts. Hopefully this will ease yours in the near future when the public beta becomes available.

The Skype Utils component provides a few features to take advantage of what this new channel brings to the Asterisk platform. First, the component provides a single method call to access a wealth of information in your dialplan that is delivered with each Skype call. This type of information is unheard of on any other channel available to Asterisk (let alone telecoms in general), this information includes:

• skype_languages - A space-separated list of language identifiers (ie - es, en, etc)
• skype_topic - A user-provided string that can identify the ‘topic’ of the call
• skype_token - Similar to skype_topic
• skype_about - ‘about’ profile entry
• skype_birthday - Birthday
• skype_gender - Gender
• skype_homepage - Home page URL
• skype_homephone - Home phone number
• skype_officephone - Office phone number
• skype_mobilephone - Mobile phone number
• skype_city - City name
• skype_province - State/Province name
• skype_country - Country name

The next feature that the component provides is the ability to map Skype usernames with Asterisk extensions. Typically Asterisk is used with phones that require you to enter a numeric phone number when dialing someone. Of course most Skype names are usernames that have nothing to do with a phone number. With this component you may enter the relationship between an extension number and a Skype username in  database with a Ruby on Rails web interface. Then when calls are made to and from the Skype network you have a seamless translation between the two.

Last (so far), but not least, is the ability to track Skype presence information. The SFA channel allows you to add ‘buddies’ to your Asterisk/Skype username. Once this has been done, you are then able to obtain status updates from each of the buddies on your list.

The component then allows you to track these status updates and access them in your dialplan. The status updates may be persisted to a database or kept in memory. Further, those status updates are not only available to your dialplan but to the REST, DRb and STOMP APIs of Adhearsion, making them available to virtually any program.

With this you may track if each Skype user is in one of the following states:

• Online - user is online
• Skype Me - user is available and asking to be ‘Skyped’
• Away - the user is away from their Skype client
• Not Available - the user is not available for a call
• Do Not Disturb - the user does not want to be disturbed
• Offline (Voicemail Enabled) - the user is offline and has voicemail
• Offline (Voicemail Disabled) - the user is offline and has no voicemail

Stay tuned for example applications that will build upon this component. In the meantime do not hesitate to have a look at the code and details here.

I would also like to thank @steely_glint and Todd Gould, fellow beta team members, for their assistance in constructing an environment where all the pieces could work. Great progress is being made on the SFA beta code, but of course there are still some quirks.

tags: adhearsion, asterisk, opensource, ruby, skype, voip, skypeforasterisk

follow @skypejournal and @Phil Wolff. Ask for an invitation to the Skype Journal private roundtable.

The Skype Restructuring: Global Products, Regional Markets

Josh Silverman joined Skype as President early in the spring of 2008; since then he has been reviewing Skype's opportunities and building a team of experienced executives who can bring to Skype the products, programs and team building expertise required to operate a business with a run rate of $600MM per year, 20% contribution margins to eBay and growing at 380,000 new account registrations per day (with "real user" growth also increasing significantly).

Summarizing the past executive appointment announcements we can clearly start to see the evolution of a business structure, along with each unit's responsibilities:

• Operations: Product, Marketing, Customer Care, Support
• Technology: Engineering, Platform, Development Community
• Strategy: Partnerships, Strategic Alliances, Acquisitions
• Administration: Global Communications Human Resources. Finance, and Legal round out the top executive team.

During our interview at CES 2009 with Skype COO Scott Durschlag, he outlined details of his restructuring of Skype's Operations team along two axes: product and geography under the mantra of providing "Skype Everywhere".

Global product offerings will encompass three divisions: consumer, business and mobile, each responsible for developing products. Each of these groups will be interacting with members of CTO Daniel Berg's technology teams to convert their technology developments into marketable global product offerings and to adapt the technology to meet product marketing needs.

• Consumer will involve the current Skype client desktop offerings along with hardware, such as Skype phones.
• Business starts with the current Skype Business Control Panel but intends to expand well beyond this starting point into a range of offerings, such as Skype for Asterisk and the recently announced IBM LotusLive developments, addressing the small-to-medium business market.
• Mobile involves current products such as Skype for Windows Mobile, Skypephone (in conjunction with iSkoot), the recently launched Skype Lite (including Skype for Android) as well as any upcoming offerings for the iPhone and BlackBerry

In addition each of these divisions will be responsible for developing appropriate customer care and support programs appropriate to market demands. For instance, the business unit will come up with ongoing support programs relevant to supporting sustainable business operations of its products' users. Ideally these programs would follow the model of Red Hat for Linux or Digium for Asterisk and build up a network of resellers and VARS who would provide relevant and timely end user support. While Dan Berg's technology team will be responsible for third party developer partner support, an additional challenge for the Business products group will be to assist with marketing of business applications offered by these developer partners.

While Skype veteran Stefan Oberg is heading up the Business unit, announcements re appointments to head up Consumer and Mobile are pending.

Along the geography axis is a recognition that, while the Products divisions have a global mandate, there are different market needs within different regions of the world. For instance, in many Asian market wireless carriers do not subsidize mobile phones as is the North American practice. This requires a differentiated approach to these markets with respect to how easily innovations, especially around reduced calling costs, can be introduced to these markets.

The geographical market responsibilities are:

• Americas: Don Albert becomes General Manager, Americas. Don has had North America responsibility for a couple of years and will now be responsible for both North and South America. With respect to the latter he is looking forward to building on all the Skype activity in Brazil, for instance. (And, yes, once again at CES Don was made aware we are awaiting SkypeIn and a Skype Store for Canada)
• Europe, Middle East, Africa (EMEA): appointment pending
• Asia/Pacific: Yesterday we saw an announcement of the appointment of Dan Neary as General Manager, Skype Asia Pacific. One of Dan's initial responsibilities will be to build and monitor closer relationships with partners such as TOMSkype to avoid embarrassments such as that created by the TOM Skype privacy breach we have reported on last fall.

Outstanding executive appointments are expected shortly; at this point it's becoming all about execution. The next six months will tell the story.

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Phil Wolff's 26 incriminating 2009 Skype Predictions

Last year's Jim Courtney's 2008 predictions and mine. 
In 2009:

1. MacWorld sucks without Steve Jobs.
2. Steve Jobs steps down as Apple CEO.
3. Skype brings back Skypecasts with a new feature: with one click, introduce spammers, con artists, and sexy webcam girls to each other.
4. Skype for Neocortex. Mood based on serotonin levels. Very high quality audio and video by tapping directly into the optic nerve and auditory system. Some side effects.
5. Skype for Lovers. Extension of Skype 4.1. Just one buddy to dial. No interruptions. Ultrasimple UI: click the heart.
6. Skype's new platforms have more active developers than BT Ribbit. More than Google Android. Fewer than Apple iPhone.
7. Litigation. 1530 sleep deprived patients sue Skype for keeping them up late.
8. Google Central will be exciting.
9. Google Video Talk adds multiparty video.
10. The Emerging Communications Conference (eComm) will sell out.
11. Yahoo! fires thousands of people. Decimates the messenger team. Hires a new executive team. Reorganizes. Again.
12. Skype introduces multiparty video. The kids love it. WebEx hates it.
13. Skype for Asterisk gets video call support. Dating sites love it.
14. Skype for WoW builds on Skype for Asterisk. The raiders love it. 
15. Skypephone comes to the Americas via partnership with with US mobile carriers. Wal-Mart will carry it. Nothing for Canada.
16. 3 INQ1 sales will cut into 3 Skypephone sales in the UK.
17. U.S. Mobile Carterfone rules (to free mobile phones from carrier contracts) will be considered by the FCC.
18. VoIP falls from telecom jargon. Even VoIP bloggers stop using the term. The public starts using Skype as a generic name for internet talk.
19. eBay's auction businesses will do well in tough times, better in the second half of the year.
20. Skype will make $630 million in FY2009.
21. Peak Skype usage will top 18 million simultaneous users.
22. Skype will serve 23 billion minutes in 2009Q4.
23. Skype scores product placements in:
    
    
    • Hannah Montana: The Movie, spurring the rise of Skype pajama parties.
    • The Sinatra Club, using the new Skypeoke feature.
    • Star Trek, as ancient technology.
    • Startups will rally to Running Out Of Angels (March 2009).
    • 24 as Cisco cuts ad spending.
    • In My Pocket (2009) is not about mobiles.
24. Skype issues new krypto since its old cryptographic source code escaped from TOM-Skype control
25. Skype Video for Mobile. Skype buys a streaming video service for smart mobile camera phones.
26. China approves SkypeIn and SkypeOut.

tags: skype, predictions, 2009, inq1, skypephone, wal-mart, canada, asterisk, video, ebay, voip, carterfone, WoW, 24, china, tom-skype

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