Since the initial announcement of Skype for SIP a year ago today, with the goal of integrating some elements of Skype’s infrastructure into legacy PBX systems that support SIP, Skype has been expanding its partner base as well as incorporating its deployment into the Skype for Business program.

To repeat: the purpose and goals of Skype for SIP are:

• to allow small-to-medium businesses to reduce their international calling cost to over 180 countries through use of Skype Out business subscriptions (without the need to negotiate and manage country-specific contracts with the telcos in each country)
• to provide a free, optionally international, click-to-call inbound calling capability through Skype Online numbers
• to allow integration of these elements of Skype into legacy PBX systems that support SIP

Recalling that Skype for SIP is still at a public open beta stage, Skype participated in four announcements yesterday that expand this ecosystem and the open beta activity with a “third party” Skype for SIP certification partner and three new PBX Gateway partners:

• Skype Selects tekVizion Labs to Manage Skype for SIP Interoperability Certification Program

tekVizion Labs has been introduced to the Skype partner community as the interoperability experts to help expedite Skype for SIP interoperability testing and certification. In addition to Skype for SIP interoperability testing, tekVizion Labs can provide consulting, integration and support services to Skype’s customers and partners and the systems integrators and value added resellers they work with.

• Grandstream Achieves Skype for SIP Interoperability Certification

Interoperability with Skype for SIP gives SMBs the ability to receive inbound calls through their Grandstream GXE IP PBX or related gateways from more than 521 million registered Skype users around the world at no additional cost to the Skype user when calling through Skype. Businesses can leverage the investment in their corporate website even further by enabling Skype users to simply click on a global click-to-call button on the website to place immediate calls to sales or support via Skype. Skype calls received through the Grandstream IP PBX are handled by the PBX in the same way as other inbound calls. For outbound calling, Grandstream customers can realize significant cost savings to landlines and mobile phones around the world using Skype’s low-cost calling rates.

• Skype for SIP now Interoperable with AudioCodes Mediant 1000 Multi-Service Business Gateways

By certifying the AudioCodes Multi-Service Business Gateways with Skype for SIP, customers can benefit from interoperability with hundreds of TDM PBXs, Key Systems, and IP-PBXs that have not been able to connect to Skype so far. In addition, if a company buys and associates an online Skype number with their AudioCodes Mediant 1000 Multi-Service Business Gateway solution, it can then receive inbound calls via Skype from business contacts and customers calling from landline and mobile phones.

• VoSKY’s New PBX Gateway Is [Amongst] Industry’s First to Achieve Skype for SIP Certification

The VoSKY SSG is available in two versions, supporting either 4 or 8 channels. It offers seamless integration with Skype for SIP Open Beta with any analog PBX or key system, connecting via a conventional (FXS) analog port. It allows businesses to take advantage of Skype’s cost savings and enhanced business features without restructuring their existing communications network and infrastructure.

As a result the Skype for SIP ecosystem grows beyond the initial partnerships announced with Shoretel, SIP Foundry and Cisco. Skype for SIP Certification ensures that Skype’s partners meet established standards not only for the technology behind the implicit interoperability required but also the user experience. And these partnerships allow Skype to leverage each vendor’s existing customer base to build awareness and revenues while disintermediating and disrupting legacy long distance business models.

Bottom line: With all the various Skype for Business activities coming this year, including the launch later this spring of the FREETALK Connect PBX incorporating both Skype for SIP and Skype for Asterisk (which also supports free Skype-to-Skype calling), small-to-medium businesses will have several options to both lower their communications cost, have customer calls directed to appropriate employees and/or end points, and expand their markets through low cost communications to new international markets.

Link to a list of all Voice On The Web posts discussing Skype for SIP.

Full disclosure: In Store Solutions, producer of the FreeTalk Connect PBX, has become a client of Denali InterConneXions, publisher of Voice On The Web, building on the author’s previous business development experience with establishing partnerships that can assist with the promotion of a primary vendor’s offerings. A more complete statement will follow shortly.

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• Grandstream Achieves Skype for SIP Interoperability Certification (eon.businesswire.com)
• Skype for SIP Now Interoperable with AudioCodes Mediant 1000 Multi-Service Business Gateways (eon.businesswire.com)
• Barriers to using Skype for business fall away (infoworld.com)
• FREETALK Connect, the worlds first Skype-enabled Unified Communications system. (saunderslog.com)
• Skype for SIP could save businesses big bucks (thenextweb.com)
• Skype Security: Is It Safe for Business? (computerworld.com)

Legion are the stories of small and medium businesses who are using Skype for their worldwide communications operations.

• Skype is the cornerstone for keeping Toronto-based  b5media’s worldwide staff of bloggers, editors, developers and executives in touch via both informal and formal conversations.
• SeeWorthy gets an assist from Skype when communicating with their Taiwanese supplier (via an Alberta-based translator), North American and Caribbean agents, and prospective European distributors as well as their customers.
• A Canadian-headquartered resource company is using Skype voice and IM for communications with their operations in Asia; their biggest challenge involves time-zone issues. Skype chat’s inherent asynchronous nature helps to address that issue.

Skype itself claims that about 30% of all its user activity is business related. I often encounter small businesses who have a wealth of stories about how Skype contributes to their business success.

But during a recent conversation with OnState CEO Pat Kelly I learned about how Skype is stealthing its way into medium to large enterprises. Pat discussed two examples (who will remain generic until case studies are available):

• OnState received an enquiry from a major North American parts distributor whose operations involve agents, resellers and business customers spread out across North America. While this company has an internal IT team, the CFO was focused on significant cost reductions for their call center operations. He has now contracted OnState to provide voice, chat and other customer relationship communications activities that do not simply save money but provide additional communications processes such as IM with its inherent presence and chat features. Once the contract was signed, the CFO mentioned he would guide his IT personnel with their role in the implementation.
• A European country manager for a worldwide, US-headquartered business found that he was getting charge-backs for “corporate” communications services that did not meet his particular needs. He had enough autonomy that he investigated OnState’s services, went through not only the technical specifications but also the legal reviews and business process requirements. He is now meeting the communications needs of his business ecosystem using Skype and OnState’s other auxiliary services for call center and virtual PBX requirements. Subsequently other European subsidiaries of the same company are implementing OnState’s services. Yet this is a situation where the U.S. head office has yet to be contacted about what additional opportunities for Skype and OnState may exist within their business.

Pat’s key point is that, in today’s economically stressed environments, there’s a trend where CFO’s and business unit managers are making the key communications services decisions in larger enterprises in order to meet their financial goals. IT personnel are playing little or no role in the decision making although they may be involved to a limited degree in the implementation. What are Pat’s key observations?

• The consumer experience with Skype is stealthing its way into business implementations, not only with prosumers and small businesses but also at the business unit level within larger enterprises.
• Why? Skype just plain works. There are no firewall issues; OnState’s SaaS model eliminates capital investment for PBX’s and related infrastructure.
• It’s relatively easy to implement.
• Economic pressures are driving adoption.
• Where a business partner or customer has Skype also, HD Voice, incorporating SILK, provide for more productive voice conversations.
• It’s not simply about using a technical mashup across multiple services (Skype, Google, and Voxbone, for example) involved in OnState implementations; it’s a “business mashup” involving business processes and employee acceptance.

It’s a repeat of a trend that drove personal computers into larger enterprises twenty-five years ago. I recall one story where a Canadian bank Vice President found an employee with a PC that had a modem attached (with, at best, a 1200 kbps speed). The modem was ordered disconnected! Bank security was going to be upheld despite technology progress. Four years later that same bank ordered over 10,000 PC cards from my employer of the day for inclusion in their new, at the time, teller terminal system.

Bottom Line: Even if it’s not totally free it’s the raw cost savings that are driving Skype adoption, sometimes in co-operation with their business software partners. It’s about not only lower calling costs but also the elimination of capital asset costs. For some business markets Skype is stealthing its way into business communications infrastructure.

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• OnState Upgrades On Demand Call Center and Virtual PBX (voiceontheweb.biz)
• Skype Modifies Fair Usage Policy (voiceontheweb.biz)
• Business Long Distance: Death by 1,000,000 PBX’s (voiceontheweb.biz)

OK, so it’s the fourth post this week where I’ve referenced Dan York. But over the two years I have known Dan I have to say he is, in my view, one of the most respected authorities on the technology behind today’s communications revolution. Yet he also understands the value of the user experience.

In celebration of Skype’s fifth birthday Dan has written the most thorough post yet on Skype’s accomplishments and how it has changed not only his life but also the communications market space he works in. He starts out with a personal reminder (along the lines of many of the “What Skype Means to Me” posts that Phil has been coordinating):

I had a personal reminder of that the other day when I wound up in a video chat with one of my closest friends who was my best man at my wedding 12 years ago. Although we have spoken in the intervening years, we had not actually seen each other in probably most of 10 years due to living far apart. He and his wife emailed a group of folks that they now had a Skype ID. I added them as a contact, opened an IM chat and wound up calling them… and then moving into video and seeing them both. It was a powerful moment – and a great reminder of the power of Skype to easily connect people.

Articulating his contribution to our Skype discussion on yesterday’s SquawkBox, Dan then goes on to talk about the many unique aspects of Skype:

• How Skype Disrupted Technology
• Skype “Just Worked”
• Wideband Audio
• Secure VoIP
• P2P VoIP
• Voice First
• Multi-Modal Communication
• PSTN Interconnection
• Cheap Calls
• Challenging SIP and Open Standards
• Persistent Chat – with History

Dan goes on to discuss some of the imperfections and bumps that Skype has experienced over the years and the need for the new executive team to express its vision for the future. (Although Josh’s “liquid communication” term is an appropriate description when I look at the variety of ways I can converse currently via Skype over my PC’s, Blackberry, Nokia N-series phones, Sony mylo, Nokia N-800 tablet, Skypephone).

Last week at Rogers’ Blackberry Bold launch, RIM’s Director of PR pointed out how, during the famous patent lawsuit, settled over two years ago, enterprise IT managers were seeking out alternatives to the Blackberry, should a court injunction force disruption of the Blackberry service in the U.S. This turned out to be one of the best “zero cost” marketing tools RIM has ever had. The IT managers could all report back that the only total solution to their mobile communications needs was indeed Blackberry. (And will remain so, in spite of iPhone’s success.)

So show me another multi-modal, secure, archiving, interconnected conversation platform that provides all the features above in a user-friendly means and that can deliver all the user experiences posted on Skype Journal over the past few days and I’ll stop being a Skype Cheerleader. (But, going forward, the Skype team still has to earn their way … and will.) Yet I’ll also be a cheerleader for anyone else who delivers beneficial user experiences with access to over 40 million ongoing users.

Reports are surfacing that Skype has been playing a significant role for many of the Olympic athletes.

Canadians have the option of watching Olympic activities during 18 hours of the day (from 6:00 p.m. to noon the following day – EDT or GMT-4) over two major networks: CBC and TSN. Canada had a dearth of medal action for the first week – causing a national angst in the mainstream Canadian media. Our two man rowing team came through with a first medal last Saturday morning and the medals have flowed to the point of winning 13 medals over the past four days.

Sunday was a big day for the Men’s Eight rowing team; having won gold at Sydney (2000), they had a major letdown by placing fifth at Athens (2004). Sunday that team, with five holdovers from 2004, won gold; it instantly became a very emotional experience for the members. During the subsequent CBC interview (unfortunately web streaming is limited to Canadians), one member mentioned how a pair of roommates had a reputation for spending a lot of time using Skype and email as their “common bond”.

Rohit Bhargava, a senior VP at Ogilvy 360, has been blogging at the games on his Influential Marketing Blog. He is in Beijing on behalf of Lenovo who is providing assistance to about 100 athlete bloggers at Voice of the Olympic Games. In the course of following the athletes’ blogging activity at the games, he interviewed three of them about their blogging experience. “Along the way in this event and through other conversations I’ve had with athletes, I picked up on several observations that only an athlete would know.” The main outcomes:

• Technology is a big topic of discussion – If you are a tech geek like me, then you probably saw the Fast Company cover article on how technology is changing the Olympics. What you might not realize is just how big of a topic of conversation this is among most athletes.
• Blogs get you interviews – Of the athletes that I spoke to with blogs, they raved about how much media the blog manages to get for them and their sport.
• Skype is the killer app – Lenovo may be the ones providing the iLounge and access to the Internet, but it is Skype that is keeping athletes connected with their families back home.
• Travelling is a pain in the *ss – For many athletes, the gear they need to carry makes life in airports and on the road really tough.

The entire post makes for interesting reading; Olympic athletes (with the exception of Canada’s 61-year-old, 9-time Olympian Ian Miller who finally won a silver medal in equestrian) are in the prime demographic of Internet savvy users. Being world travellers to participate in all their competitions has driven them to strongly adopt Internet technology, including Skype, as their primary communications tool.

And a final recommendation: read Rohit’s other posts on the Games; they make for an interesting background on how to survive in Beijing during the Games. And he has a most interesting post on how to make your “exclusive” Olympic sponsorship backfire. In the Canadian scene, Visa continues to run an ad about an athlete for whom there were medal expectations and, unfortunately the event got to him – he did not even advance from his event’s initial heat.

OnState Communications hosts business communications services that facilitate customer relationship management and enterprise marketing activities. OnState Call Center for Skype allows even the smallest business to operate a call center with geographically disbursed agents. OnState Unified Communications provides complete business real time communications management by extending the call center back office functionality to include conversation recording and archiving as well as messaging activities such as email and voice mail.

Customer conversations, whether through Skype or the legacy PSTN, may be initiated from a website with click-to-call and click-to-chat buttons, toll free numbers or direct inward dialing (DID) numbers. All back office agent connectivity is handled via Skype to minimize costs.

OnState is a one-stop supplier whose services include setting up not only their own services but also complementary services such as management of Skype accounts and Skype hardware acquisition.

Summary from Supplier: OnState’s founding and management team have pioneered communications solutions that drive customer service and empower business users – so they are aptly named the call center guys. Through highly successful careers with industry giants such as Cisco Systems, GeoTel Communications, and Nortel, they hold scores of industry patents for applications that you may be using right now including: Automatic Call Distributors (ACD); Intelligent Call Routing; Network Call Routing; Computer Telephony Integration (CTI); Voice Response Units (VRU); Customer Relationship Management (CRM); and Quality Assurance and Employee Performance Management.

Always at the forefront of business communications tools that directly serve people, the OnState team is redefining the traditional call center paradigm. They deliver a solution that exploits the convergence of advanced Internet, voice and networking technologies to create value-driven collaborative environments – at the lowest cost possible anytime, anywhere.

Website: www.on-state.com

Products and Services:

• OnState Call Center for Skype
• OnState Unified Communications

During our absence in December I did have the opportunity to evaluate and, more importantly, “experience” three relatively new ways of making voice calls:

• Skype 3.0 Gold Release with its ability to create “Click-to-Call” for any phone number in an Internet Explorer or Firefox web browser. (Complementing the latest release of the Skype Email Toolbar)
• a Nokia N80i (i = Internet edition) with its ability to work on both WiFi and GSM/GPRS/EDGE networks (including support for the 850MHz band used in North America) enhanced with the Truphone service.
• a Blackberry 8700

As one more complement to this scenario, I use the VoIPvoice Cyberphone or UConnect as my Skype USB Phone on my laptop. (I have the original RTX Dualphone on my desktop PC.) The key feature with the VoIPvoice products is their ability to handle Windows sound devices in a user friendly manner.

As a result I have found that, for over 90% of my phone calls, I am no longer dialing phone numbers:

First, the Skype experience: If you read my initial post-absence post, you will know why I had to make many phone calls to family friends across Canada last month. With the Skype Web Toolbar (optionally) embedded into my IE 7 or Firefox 2.0 by the Skype 3.0 installation, I simply used Canada411 to look up a phone number, clicked on the resulting Skype-enhanced phone number, clicked again to confirm that I was making a SkypeOut call and made my connections. If the called party was already in my Outlook Contacts I could look the party up, find the appropriate number in the Skype Email Toolbar and click to initiate the call. What really hits home, given my age, is that when we lived in western Canada in the 50′s calls back to Toronto would cost about $1.00 to $3.00 per minute, and given the value of the dollar then, one would rarely make personal long distance calls of any significant duration. Yet last month I was able to make all those calls at no cost. The only concern as to the length of the call was the called party’s availability.

(Note re the Skype Email Toolbar: this product is finally rock solid stable. As I have mentioned previously I have been a beta tester for this utility since its initial development activity almost two years ago. I had uncovered some relatively “deep”, but critical bugs (that, for instance, resulted in fixing a bug involving a third party dll) but Peter Kalmstrom’s Toolbar team at Skype worked diligently to ensure these bugs were addressed. The same can be said for the Web Toolbars where they finally were able to address a persistent bug that occurred only on certain sites, such as my bank website (where for confidentiality reasons I could not supply complete information). Kudos to the Skype Toolbar team for all their efforts and the resulting success. If you have not installed these Toolbars or previously experienced problems, I recommend you give them a try.)

During this period I received my evaluation Nokia N80i as a participant in Andy’s Nokia Blogger program. Around that time also came out the announcement that Truphone supported the N80i. So my first download was the Truphone Wizard and I was able to make calls to landlines anywhere in the world at no cost provided I had a WiFi connection. In fact, I ended up talking one evening for close to an hour with Andy while he enjoyed his post dinner culinary treasures at a Paris café. Once again, one simply needs to select the called party from the Nokia’s Contacts directory and select which phone to call. No “dialing”.

Finally the Blackberry 8700. I had reason to use it quite heavily during December. In addition to clicking to call parties in the Contacts directory; it also makes any phone number appearing in an email, Blackberry Messenger conversation, Note, Task or any other Blackberry application clickable. Once again a minimum of dialing.

Finally, when using the VoIPvoice products (Cyberphone and UConnect) not only can I access my Skype Contacts via a speech recognition routine but I am also able to use any of the Skype Toolbar features to initiate a call without dialing.

So the ability to avoid dialing phone numbers is rapidly becoming one of my key criteria in evaluating all phone products. Probably one more “nail-in-the-coffin” for Skype WiFi phones that simply do not have this capability. I simply don’t want to “dial” phone numbers.

Tags: Skype, click-to-call, Skype Email Toolbar, Blackberry 8700, Truphone, Nokia N80i

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In a game where the lowest number wins! Google announced a Click-to-Call feature for Google Maps yesterday. So I go to Google Maps, select Businesses, enter “restaurants” into the Type of Business box and “Mississauga {Home Postal Code}” into the “Where” box. And I get:

Click on B for Golden View Restaurants (where we obtain our annual New Year’s Eve party food) and I get the pop-up below on the right. Click on Send to Phone and I get the pop-up asking for my phone number and my carrier — except there are only U.S. carriers listed (and all Telco 1.0)! 3 clicks plus 10 characters (to enter your phone number). Except I live in Canada ….hmmm ….

Or, since I have installed the Skype 3.0 Beta with its Click-to-Call feature, I can simply pick up my UConnect-enabled Nortel phone, dial **, (or pick up a USB-connected VoIPvoice Cyberphone) and click on the Skypified link under the restaurant’s listing on the left:. I then click OK on the “Start SkypeOut” confirmation window. Call initiated; no Telco 1.0 carrier designation required! (And note that Skype 3.0′s Click-to-Call recognizes that it is a Canadian phone number.) One click to place the call; one to acknowledge that there could be a charge involved.

A simple example of what Martin is talking about in his Telco 2.0 “Death of the Phone Company” post.