A Skype Developer blog post today, The future of Skype Extras, has created confusion and havoc amongst the blogging community that follows Skype (see, for example, the Zemanta links below). Having followed the Skype Developer Program over the past three years (and currently being a commercial user of some of the developers’ offerings) let me put this in some perspective:

1. Over the past four years Skype has developed a set of API’s that allow third party developers to create their own offerings that make use of, or incorporate as a conversation tool, Skype.
2. One of the first utilities was Pamela, which provides call recording (now audio and video), call archiving, call management and other features that enhance the Skype user experience. Others that came along include Skylook, OnState Call Center, HiDef Conferencing and Evoca.
3. Late in 2006 Skype developed a marketing engine for these partner offerings and called the resulting marketing program “Skype Extras”. It was an attempt at an App Store that became part of the standard Skype for Windows client download. In the Skype for Windows 4.1, a user can go to “Tools | Skype Extras” and see a menu of these software partners’ programs.
4. The Skype Extras backend, called Skype Publishing Studio, included an engine where developers could establish licensing terms (including allowing trials and periodic subscription renewals) and incorporate a transaction engine for payments via Skype Credits. Only one partner ever used the transaction engine: Scendix, for their PamFax offering. In fact, it was their use of all the features of the Skype Extras engine that contributed to their award as the winner of Skype’s Mashup competition held in the summer of 2007.
5. In the fall of 2007, Niklas Zenstromm resigned as CEO of Skype and the Skype Extras program effectively languished. A long promised road map never materialized. During the interregnum I put my thoughts down in A Primer for Skype’s Direction – Skype’s Extras Gallery and Developer Partner Program.
6. Two popular Skype Software Partners, Unyte and VAPPS (HiDef Conferencing) have been acquired by IBM Lotus Sametime Division and Citrix respectively.
7. Software Partners, such as Scendix (Pamela, PamFax), OnState (Call Center and Virtual PBX), Skylook, InnerPass and Evoca have continued to develop and mature their offerings. However, there was one noticeable trend – they also reduced their dependence on Skype, either by adding other voice and IM services to into their offerings or, in the case of PamFax 2.0, adding new payment mechanisms such as PayPal, Moneybookers and WorldPay.
8. Most of these vendors have effectively found other ways to promote their offerings through other channels. Certainly OnState and Scendix are seeing record levels of activity and revenues.

So to clarify today’s announcement:

• Skype Extras as a marketing program is coming to an end over the next year. No new software or upgrades will be certified for, or included in, the Skype Extras offering.
• Current Skype Extras will continue to be available via the Skype for Windows client “until they expire” (expiration may take up to a year). And those software programs that include a “check for update” feature will be able to provide a path to their latest offering.
• Skype will continue to support their software partners via the Public API’s; documentation will be maintained. (Developers had often lauded Skype’s level of support in this regard.) In other words, developers can count on having the technology resources required to continue development and support of their offerings.
• The Skype Shop will continue to feature currently listed Skype Extras.
• In an email to developers Skype also mentioned that they’ll have three months (until December 11) to continue using Skype Credits. As noted above, Scendix, whose PamFax was the only program using Skype Credits, has already built in alternative payment mechanisms.

In summary it’s approaching the end of a marketing program, but definitely not developer support. As an app store, the Skype Extras program was not exactly a success story; however, the underlying API’s and support for them are not going away. The smart developer partners have evolved their offerings in a way that certainly reduces or eliminates their dependence on the Skype Extras marketing program while experiencing new levels of market success.

Speaking this afternoon with InnerPass CEO Steve Parsloe, whose Skype-enabled document sharing program has certainly become successful via its marketing on Skype Extras, he stated, “I’m confident that Skype is looking at new marketing solutions that will continue to benefit not only its developer partners but also its end users, especially the business users.”

It does leave questions about where Skype is going in terms of supporting their partners’ through some form of a new or revamped Software Developer Program. Skype is taking significant steps to approach the Skype for Business market. In a post later this weekend, I’ll point to some signals as to what could be coming in the future.

Related articles by Zemanta

• Skype Eats More Young: RIP Skype’s software developers relations program. (skypejournal.com)
• Skype Kills Extras (and Its Developer Ecosystem) (gigaom.com)

Stefan Öberg, Vice-President, Skype for Business, provided his overview on “the future of modern business communications” at Interop last week. He started off by outlining his perspective on how consumer adoption of Skype is building business adoption from consumer experience; he feels this is driven by:

• • Economy: 43% percent of knowledge workers in US enterprises with 500 or more employees already use non-company-owned equipment on enterprise networks and systems.
  • Connectivity: We live in a world with an increasingly ubiquitous, pervasive and affordable communications infrastructure, which encourages new acquisition and delivery models, especially those using the web.
  • New technology: A combination of affordable devices, low-cost communications, widespread ownership means that access to and acceptance of new technologies is growing.
  • Employees: Employees bring their experiences and expectations from the ‘real world’ into the work environment – this is particularly relevant when considering an increasing population of digital natives in the workforce.

Recently Voice On The Web has reported on a couple of examples of this trend:

• Stealthing Skype into Larger Businesses
• Stealthing Skype into Healthcare: Consumer Experience Drives Practitioner Adoption

Stefan went on to provide some statistics coming out of user studies carried out last year:

• 20% of our users make Skype video calls for business purposes †
• 95% say they are saving money *
• 62% say they communicate better with customers using Skype *
• 70% say they are using it while traveling on business *
• 80% say they are seeing increased productivity *

* Source: Skype user study of 4,000 users in the US, UK and China conducted in March 2008
† Source: Results from a December 2008 online survey of 2452 active Skype users in the US and UK

Stefan makes some good points, supporting more quantitatively what we have suspected about perceptions of Skype use in business.

However, when he went on to talk about Skype’s expanding ecosystem via Skype for Asterisk and Skype for SIP for penetrating the business market, his brief mention of business infrastructure for Skype (including the Business Control Panel) neglected the services provided by several of Skype’s Software Partners on which Voice On The Web has reported in the past:

• OnState: Virtual Call Center and Virtual PBX
• Managed Collaboration:
  • InnerPass: Team building that Integrates Skype with business grade document management
  • Yugma: desktop sharing across Mac and Windows platforms
  • Lotus Live Unyte: the pioneer in business grade desktop sharing using Skype
  • HiDef Conferencing (now Citrix Online Audio Services Group): a high quality, managed conference calling service
• PamFax: converting your PC into a worldwide accessible fax machine
• Pamela: a comprehensive Skype utility for call management, conversation archiving, personalizing conversations and a bit of fun
• Skylook: combining Skype with Outlook to deliver effective, yet low cost, customer relationship management; turning Outlook into a conversation manager and archive
• Evoca: hosted voice recording for building audience engagement and participation across news services, television documentaries and websites or weblogs (a description and review of Evoca’s new Express services is in preparation).
• (and, if I have missed any Skype Software partner with a business application, add a comment and I’ll update)

Bottom line: While certainly Skype for Asterisk and Skype for SIP will expand the reach and promotion of Skype through their respective distribution channels (Digium/Asterisk ecosystem and PBX vendors), ongoing innovation is also occurring and being adopted in the Skype Software Partner ecosystem. The current economic conditions are accelerating adoption of these conversation management services as businesses, whether entrepreneurial SMB’s or business units of larger enterprises, search out ways to grow their business but at significantly lower costs. More examples of Skype Everywhere driving business model disruption.

Related articles by Zemanta

• Stealthing Skype into Larger Businesses (voiceontheweb.biz)
• OnState Upgrades On Demand Call Center and Virtual PBX (voiceontheweb.biz)
• Business Long Distance: Death by 1,000,000 PBX’s (voiceontheweb.biz)
• Skype Opens Up To SIP, Finally Eyes Enterprise Customers The Way It Should (techcrunch.com)
• Skype For SIP: Big Money, Skypeless, Brand Destroyer (skypejournal.com)
• Skype targets businesses with new service (news.cnet.com)
• Skype For SIP: Sorting Through the Issues (voiceontheweb.biz)
• Skype Modifies Fair Usage Policy (voiceontheweb.biz)

Evoca provides the infrastructure required to record and playback user generated content on a website. Evoca Call Recorder provides hosted call recording of Skype conversations.

Summary from Supplier: Put Evoca to work on your website and keep visitors coming back. Offer your customers, audiences and supporters easy ways to record and play back user-generated content: comments, reviews, testimonials, and opinions online. Let them call your website from any phone – landline, mobile and Skype™. Post the audio recordings you choose into branded Flash players that bring any web page alive.

Main Website: http://www.evoca.com

Products and Services:

• Evoca Media Services: an API platform that integrates phone-to-Web features into your existing web applications
• Evoca Call Recorder: hosted recording and play back for Skype calls
  

Programming API Available : Yes

HTML Code Snippets Available : Yes

While this blog tends to focus on new developments and the role they can play in our future real time conversations, it sometimes pays to look back to see what has been accomplished. For 2007, these are, from my perspective, top ten accomplishments for the Skype ecosystem:

1. eBay CEO Meg Whitman states at an eBay quarterly analyst conference call, “Not enough focus on ‘Delight The User’”. Hopefully this is a high priority guiding principal in the search for a new Skype CEO. Great technology but needs the business development, marketing and leadership skills of a seasoned high technology executive to truly make Skype happen on a world market leader scale. End users need a delightful “total” experience, including user support, adequate and well timed announcement of changes to calling plans, more participation in the blogosphere, higher awareness and broader availability of Skype hardware … and the list goes on.

2. Skype High Quality Video: because it brings a whole new dimension and level of realism to real time conversations. Yes, to take full advantage requires a new webcam with enhanced optics, but my final selection came because of the very positive reaction and response of those whom I converse with and who receive my High Quality Video (Recipients don’t need all the requirements of senders — the past two weeks two parties have observed “my” High Quality Video on their Macs.) A success story involving not only Skype software but also hardware specifications and co-operative device driver development.

3. HD Voice –nobody has called it that specifically but here I pick up a term used to name a Fall VON session. I refer to wideband voice transmission covering a minimum 8Khz audio bandwidth (twice that of conventional telephony). Over the year Skype has been making gradual improvements to the Skype voice engine, including the codecs, such that today most Skype voice conversations can be held with a basic laptop, and no additional headset or microphone (provided one is available in the laptop) is required. Over Christmas I helped my son with a Skype for Mac installation; he made a call yesterday from his home that was very clear using his basic Mac speakers and mic. Each new version of Skype since Skype 3.2 has had some improvements but with Skype 3.6 I am getting many unsolicited comments about how it better handles lower Internet connection bandwidth configurations. And, should you use a headset, such as the FreeTalk Wireless Stereo headset, for, say, personal privacy or office etiquette reasons, you will find your other parties on the call “in your head”. HD Voice received additional support this fall when HiDef Conferencing became equipped with the ability to ensure all Skype participants on a conference call would experience HD Voice quality when conversing with other Skype users on the same call.

4. Mobile Access to Skype. We still don’t have a Skype client for three of the most popular mobile devices (Nokia, Blackberry, iPhone); true mobile VoIP requires not only either WiFi or 3G connectivity but also appropriate wireless network infrastructure to handle the capacity demands VoIP would place on a wireless network. However, we have seen the release of several offerings that provide a combination of an IM client for these platforms along with a protocol that allows easy access to the wireless network to complete a call from a mobile device at reduced costs. These include the 3 Skypephone, IM+ for Skype (even works on not only the iPhone but also iPod Touch), iSkoot and Fring.

5. Skype Developer Partner acquired: Pioneering Skype Developer Partner Webdialogs was acquired by IBM’s Lotus Sametime division in September. Certainly says that with the right technology and offerings there is potential for other Skype developer partners to lead the way to expanding the Voice 2.0 world where applications are the value generator. Question: will IBM’s Lotus Sametime license Skype technology for their own real time conversations capability?

6. Skype Developer Platform. While still requiring web services support to be offering a complete mashup development platform, the Skype Mashup contest and announcement of the Skype Public Platform Roadmap have brought enhanced awareness to this program. Partner PamConsult has led the way in demonstrating, with PamFax, how Skype technology, digital rights management and transaction engine can be combined to offer a carrier independent, worldwide service that requires only a Skype user account, an Internet connection but no additional hardware beyond a basic PC.

7. Disruption Rules: While PamFax can reduce the cost of those $1.00+ per page faxes from hotels, two Skype Partners have introduced products that portend for significant business model disruption:

• OnState’s Call Center brings a “no hardware” solution to the call center space. Whereas a full call center previously required a low six figure investment in a PBX, as well as IT support and other infrastructure, OnState’s Call Center has the cost of a PC for each agent along with a $30 per month per agent ongoing subscription fee with no long term commitments.. Suddenly call centers become viable both for even the smallest business and for remotely located, geographically distributed employees.
• Vapps, Inc.s’ HiDef Conferencing provides hosted business grade conference calling (with HD Voice support as mentioned above) that is robust, reliable, scalable and supports up to 500 participants on a call. For as little as $25 per month to as much as $200 per month you can have 10 to 500 Skype participants with unlimited minutes as well as 300 to 5,000 toll-free minutes for callers from the legacy phone network. Six years ago $200 got me one hour of a five-party conference call. (Jan 2009 Update: HiDef Conferencing has been acquired by Citrix and is offering free trial calling until February 15, 2009.)

8. Innovation Rules. Whereas disruption requires the displacement of legacy business processes, innovation brings new services that allow new, previously unavailable (business) processes to happen:

• For instance, there is a Vosky distributor in Texas who has worked with a local social service agency to provide much more effective counselling services by bringing into the monthly review of “challenged” children’s education the child’s teachers located at the school during a social worker’s monthly visit to parents at home.via Skype conference calling.
• But we also are seeing innovative new services such as Evoca’s Media Service. This involves a hosted “Get a Phone for your Website” audio service that provides for asynchronous voice conversations being used, for instance, by Discovery Channel, with user access from either Skype or a legacy telephone.
• Collaboration: there are three different collaboration services, each addressing its own market niche. I label these services as innovative as they bring entirely new processes to business for both internal and external conversations, especially businesses that are geographically disbursed.

9. Skype Toolbars: For some time Skype has offered toolbars which make Skype calling more readily accessible in common applications such as Outlook, Internet Explorer and Firefox. In fact, the Skype Outlook Toolbar and Firefox extension have both become routine elements of my everyday communications operations. (Remember, I don’t dial phone numbers, I call people with real names.) Two weeks ago, Skype released a new version of the Skype Outlook Toolbar which has optimized Skype-enabled operations within Outlook while eliminating a couple of “nuisance” bugs in the previous version. However, the browser toolbars became embedded into the standard Skype installation but should you elect not to install them, you now have to re-install Skype itself. This is one example where Skype needs to “Delight the User” by restoring the ability to install these Toolbars individually when they were not installed at the time of Skype installation.

10. Skype Public Chats: Since first introduced in May, I have been a participant on several group chats, the most enduring being the Skype 3.x Discussion chat where several Skype enthusiasts share their thoughts and ideas. One interesting aspect of this particular chat is that a few members of the Skype Developer team and Skype PR people monitor the session and, when appropriate and not in conflict with “company policy”, participate in the conversation as well as provide notification about new releases, etc. It was a rather heated discussion on this public chat that lead to this Skype Journal post about restoring a “geek” feature buried in Skype related to Skype video. Another Public Chat was open during the beta testing of the Skype Outlook Toolbar; no doubt its input, and ability to bring out common issues, contributed to the robustness of the newly released Skype Outlook Toolbar.

11. (I can’t stop at 10): And for the 11th accomplishment: Skype Technology Licensing: In my recent interview with Sten Tamkivi, GM of Skype Estonia (a detailed post to follow), he mentioned that Skype is migrating its development focus to becoming a platform developer from simply a client and services developer. In addition to a platform for Partners (discussed above), the recent licensing to MySpace is the first in the series of what they hope becomes Skype infrastructure technology licensing deals with other services as their route into, say, providing social networking infrastructure.

From my perspective these have been the top accomplishment within the Skype ecosystem in 2007. It has resulted in a cost effective conversation ecosystem that has no equal amongst VoIP service providers. However, this ecosystem is not near demonstrating its full potential; hopefully eBay will announce a new CEO soon who captain the ship into providing a “delightful user experience” at full sail.

Next: My projections for 2008. Related “Skype Primer” posts:

• A Backgrounder
• Enabling Real Time Communications
• Skype Hardware – If and When Available
• Skype’s Extras Gallery and Developer Partner Program
• Mobile Conversations

Tags: Skype, eBay, Meg Whitman, High Quality Video, HD Voice, Skype Developer Program, OnState, Evoca, PamFax, Convenos, Yugma, Unyte, PamConsult, Skype Public Chat, MySpace, HighSpeedConferencing.com, FreeTalk Wireless Stereo Headset, Vosky, Skype Outlook Toolbar, IBM Lotus Sametime

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Ever since eBay’s acquisition of Skype over two years ago, there has been speculation as to how eBay and Skype should be “integrated” to enhance the auction process. While not the world’s most active eBay participant, I have used it several times to acquire items not normally available in Canada and to sell (ironically) a “surplus” Nortel PBX a few years ago. But I have also had the opportunity to attend a couple of eBay Live events and gain some of the flavor of the extent of the Ebay domain and the enthusiasm of its resellers, especially the several hundred thousand who run a full time business through eBay.

During these eBay Live sessions I have noted two key facts:

• There is very little Skype awareness amongst the eBay reseller community.
• When one or two Skype training sessions are available over the three days of eBay Live, they are well attended with an eagerness to learn more about Skype

My primary question has always been, how would one maintain the integrity of the auction process while engaging in real time conversations. It appears there are several stages to the auction process:

• Setting up the individual item’s auction information
• Executing the auction, accepting bids and “Buy Now” requests
• Finalizing the payment transaction
• Delivering the item, and
• Exchanging buyer and seller feedback.

The key for the first two stages is to enhance the integrity of the auction itself by ensuring that information exchanged between seller and bidder is available to all potential bidders. Real time one-on-one Skype chat and voice conversations have the potential to violate the integrity sought. Yet, with Skype there are two solutions:

1. Establish a Skype Public Chat that can be joined by any bidder who is on Skype; the reseller can manage who remains on the chat to eliminate “spammers” and others wh go off-subject..
2. Establish an ongoing asynchronous voice conversation using Evoca’s hosted voice recording and playback services. This allows all (potential) bidders to have an asynchronous, ongoing conversation with the seller incorporating all the additional information disclosed as a result of bidder queries..

For the last three stages, standard Skype conversations (voice, IM chat and video) can be used to provide customer service and support, as appropriate to the individual auction. Should their business be ongoing with sufficient transaction volume, even OnState’s ACD Call Center solution can be invoked (at $38 per seat per month – no capital costs) to ensure calls are directed to an appropriate party.

But then there is a bigger challenge beyond simply installing Skype and creating Skype accounts: training eBay Resellers on how they can implement and use Skype to their business’s advantage. It is not sufficient simply to make Skype buttons available for eBay Resellers. The Skype ecosystem not only offers basic real time conversation support but also, through its Skype Developer Partners, call recording and conversation archiving as well as collaboration and conferencing tools which may be useful for certain categories of resellers. But they need training to realize the full potential of Skype.

And then there is the missed viral opportunity yet to be fulfilled.

Tags: Skype, eBay, Skype Developer Partners, Skype Public Chat, Evoca, OnState

This is the fourth post in a series summarizing the current state of Skype’s ecosystem and providing a perspective on the assets in place for a new CEO to run with.

Getting to the Present

Alec Saunders’ Voice 2.0 Manifesto talks about Applications as the value creators in a Voice 2.0 world. Once again Skype differentiates itself through a two-year-old Skype Developer Partner program as evidenced by Skype’s Extras Gallery. But getting to this point was not easy; in fact:

• Developer Partners had to be true entrepreneurs who kept their vision of a value-generating application above all the obstacles encountered in not only developing their offering but also in initially marketing it. Close communication with many players at Skype was a key to resolving many issues.
• Skype needed to develop experience with all the subtleties of a developer program from building a roadmap and a viable API set to communicating where Skype would play and where they would let their Partners play in the overall market space.
• Skype’s API set has evolved over time to the point where only over the past summer, as evidenced through the Skype Mashup competition, it provides a more complete set of developer tools, including many, such as Call Transfer, that have been clamored for by developers. (But Skype is by no means finished yet with delivering API’s.)
• Skype has also developed a publishing platform, Publishing Studio, that lets developers focus on their application while providing the infrastructure to bring the application to market and generate transactions associated with the application
• To provide standards for quality assurance, Skype is in the process of certifying its partners’ software applications.

The Voice 2.0 Challenge

The Voice 2.0 Manifesto talks about three flavors of applications:

• Voice applications such as conferencing, enhanced voice mail, audio hosting.
• Voice enabled IT applications: collaboration tools, Salesforce.com, Outlook integration, call centers — all designed to assist the knowledge worker
• The voice web: mashup of voice and the Internet. Here the combination of voice and web services offers the greatest opportunities. From the Voice 2.0 Manifesto: “Examples include: spoken word real estate descriptions from the MLS coupled with mapping, voice enabled matchmaker services, customer service coupled with inventory / ordering / availability. The mix of text, web, voice, and programmatic access to data is a heady brew.”

To date we have seen several offerings in the first two categories with initial steps taken, such as with PamFax, into the last category. However, this category’s true potential will only be realized when web services API’s are incorporated into the Skype API set. (The first one is on their recently released roadmap.) One other challenge for the SDP is to extend this program from Windows to the Mac platform.

Skype Publisher Studio

In the course of judging for the Skype Mashup Competition and checking out some newer Skype Extras, it became apparent why the Skype Publishing Studio is a valuable asset and differentiator, not only for Skype but also for, especially, the Skype Developer Partners:

• provides complete install/uninstall infrastructure
• includes Digital Rights Management that allows the publisher to determine the licensing terms for the software including free trials and offerings; tolled, monthly or annual subscriptions, etc.
• connects to a transaction processor that provides mechanisms for payments via Skype Credtis, which, in turn, can be purchased via PayPal or a credit card.

Basically the Publisher Studio relieves Extras publishers of the need to worry about overhead that would be common to them all and allowing them to focus all their resources on the actual value-creating application. Along with the Publishing Stuido, the Skype Developer program is requiring adherence to standards for usability, robustness and overall quality assurance through the Skype Software Certification program.

PamFax, worldwide winner of the recent Skype Mashup competition, demonstrates the full power of the Publishing Studio through its use of all features, including transaction handling. My quote to the Share Skype blog post about PamFax’s award:

“As I judge I found many excellent entries that demonstrate the value of various aspects of the Skype ecosystem. However, the winners have gone beyond the normal “just add Skype” and taken a broader advantage of the entire Skype ecosystem to turn their Skype Extra into a full business opportunity. For instance, PamFax demonstrates that the Skype Extra program not only provides API’s into Skype but also provides a flexible set of licensing terms and a unique means to quickly collect revenues via the Skype Extras transaction engine.”

Essential Reading: Phil’s post yesterday (Russell Shaw also thought so): Why Skype and Vonage Must Live:

Skype is still evolving how to work in the hundreds of network and compute environments in hundreds of millions of situations. Those situations are challenging and evolving on their own. How you cross firewalls, scale p2p, and adapt streams for mobile conditions aren’t ready to be locked down.

Bottom line: Along with Skype’s provision of a complete suite of real time conversation tools, the Skype Developer Partner program is the other big differentiator from other “VoIP” services. This program:

• positions Skype outside the traditional “legacy telephony replacement” space
• opens up significant sustainable revenue generation opportunities for both Skype and its Developer Partners
• brings reduced communications costs and increased productivity to its business users

And somebody must like these Extras: over 21 million downloads. Another success story: WebDialogs (publisher of Unyte) recently became a division of IBM’s Lotus SameTime Group.

Reference posts:

• Unyte’s Tale: Pioneering and Persevering as a Skype SDP
• On Being a Skype Software Business Solution Partner
• A Banner Day for Skype Development Program
• Desktop Collaboration: The Skype Ecosystem Expands
• Skype Partners Answer Jeff’s Challenge for Innovation in Voice Services
• The Dawn of the Mashup World: – Part I: Challenges, Why and Expectations

Business Solutions Extras:

• Voice Recording and Archiving Applications: Pamela, Skylook
• Voice Services: Evoca, HighSpeed Conferencing.com.
• Call Center: OnState ACD for Skype
• Collaboration: Convenos, Unyte Yugma Skype
• Animation: Crazy Talk
• Miscellaneous Utilities: MyToGo, PamFax

For Skype Journal posts on these Partners, enter the Partner’s name into Skype Journal’s Search box and you will get a list of all posts related to that Partner. The complete set of Skype Extras, including games, entertainment and personalization Extras, can be found here or by going to Tools | Do More | Get Extras on the Skype for Windows client.

Other posts in this Skype Primer Series

• A Backgrounder
• Enabling Real Time Communications
• Skype Hardware – If and When Available

Tags: Skype, Voice 2.0 Manifesto, Skype API, Skype Extras, Skype Developer Partner Program, Skype Publishing Studio, Pamela, Skylook, Evoca, HighSpeedConferencing.com, OnState ACD for Skype, Convenos, Unyte, Yugma, Crazy Talk, MyToGo, PamFax, Phil Wolff, Russell Shaw

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The past week has provided an opportunity for all the nay-sayers and pessimists to say “I told you so”. But many bloggers have followed on Jeff Pulver’s lead with I Come to Praise Skype, not to Bury Them. Alec Saunders: Stop Wringing Your Hands. Skype is a Huge Success:

No, Skype isn’t a failure. By most definitions it’s a roaring success. The failure was EBay’s when they paid so handsomely for a business that was dedicated to sucking the profits out of a bloated telecom industry. Skype’s business plan was to take less money from consumers than a telco would for the same services. What were they expecting? What Skype hasn’t done is live up to its potential. The platform which many hoped would emerge from the momentum of Skype — the Voice 2.0 ideal of voice as an element in all applications — appears to have been sublimated to the needs of EBay’s balance sheet. The potential for Skype to utterly dominate voice in this new world has not yet been realized.

There’s still time. Nobody else has come close to what they’ve accomplished.

Over the past week I have also spoken with several Skype Partners; they all can only talk about the potential of Skype. I have to say, that due to the entrepreneurship shown by these partners, the Voice 2.0 ideal is being demonstrated in practice. Yes, they may be Skype versions of some legacy applications; however, Skype makes them even more useful and cost effective as applications. Best example: OnState’s Call Center virtually eliminates the need for a six figure PBX in order to operate a call center. And it provides an additional mode of communication with its unique chat capabilities. Three collaboration tools (my series will continue later this week); a voice conferencing app that handles up to 500 participants; Skype utilities (Pamela, Skylook) for logging and archiving in depth your Skype activities and a voice hosting service are all contributing to the Voice 2.0 ideal. And Paul Amery has done an excellent job of leading the Skype Developer Partner program while still recognizing there’s still a long road ahead to make it totally successful. The recent Skype Mashup contest demonstrated developer enthusiasm for incorporating Skype services into new applications.

Ken Camp, one of Skype’s most frequent critics, in “Comments from the Blogging World on Skype” sums it up with (typos corrected):

Overall, I think the community at large is still waiting to see what happens. There have been times I have not been a fan of Skype at all. That said, I want to see them succeed. I want to see them thrive more than they ever have. And like others, I’m optimistic that under the right leadership, Skype can set the bar far higher than they ever have before.

Thanks, Ken. Enough said….

Now that we are through the Canadian Thanksgiving holiday my Skype Primer series will continue later this week also.

Tags: Skype, Jeff Pulver, Alec Saunders, Ken Camp, Paul Amery, Skype Developer Program, OnState, Pamela, Skylook, Evoca, Convenos, Unyte, Yugma

Over the past three weeks I have had the opportunity to attend the Skype sessions at the eBay-Skype Developers Conference, to meet with and/or interview several Skype Software Business Solution Partners (product reviews forthcoming), and to spend a day at eBay Live – especially in the exhibit area.

Out in the blogosphere, especially via posts from the mesh 2007 and Enterprise 2.0 conferences, we have also seen a few observations about how social networking tools and, in particular, Skype, are penetrating the small enterprise market. The combination of these activities has helped bring into clearer focus what it takes to be a successful Skype Business Solution Partner, not from a technology perspective, but rather an approach to building a sustainable business.

First and foremost – bring along some experience in a vertical market or solution:

• Unyte has been providing desktop sharing services for several years;
• Real Allusion brings expertise in graphic enhancement and animation to Crazy Talk
• The OnState team brings over twenty years’ experience in developing successful Call Center solutions to its OnState ACD product,
• VAPPS brings carrier grade conferencing technology and experience to HighSpeedConferencing.com
• The Convenos team brings several years’ experience in building virtual meeting solutions
• Evoca had been developing a call recording, messaging and transcription web service business around any telephony service for academics, media companies and political campaigns

Second: Be prepared to be a persistent, patient pioneer.

• The Unyte story, initially presented here in an interview with Unyte’s CTO, Gershon Goren , but also articulated so well by Unyte’s CEO Lou Guercia at the Skype “Concepts to Cash” presentation, describes how the Unyte developer team had to work with Skype personnel as both the API set and the developer program evolved over the past two plus years.
• But I also heard about how incorporating Skype into Evoca’s product offering required supportive assistance from Skype personnel to bring on board the first web service involving Skype.
• The OnState ACD solution required patience until Skype could offer full call transfer capability; in the interim they built a Skype chat solution accessible from any website.

The evolution to the current Skype Software Developer Program removes some of the obstacles encountered by these pioneers; on the other hand they have been trail blazers contributing towards what is offered today.

• But the most important advice comes from Dick Schiferli at Pamela: “Nurture your Skype relationship and maintain an appropriate level of engagement by building good lines of two-way communication with Skype”.
• And don’t forget about Skype Software certification whose goal is to provide standards for quality assuance. As of July 2, Skype Software Certification will be required to become a Skype Partner.

Third: Ensure you have a value add product or service, not simply a feature

As an example consider Call Recording: Three partner products involve Call Recording: Pamela, Skylook and Evoca. In addition, Skype offers its own voice mail service but it’s simply that – voice mail with no PC access via MP3 files or other enhancements.

However, when you dig deeper you will find that call recording is a feature within each of these products/services. It is the value add proposition incorporating the call recording feature that differentiates each of the offerings. For instance:

• Pamela offers (MP3) call recording/voice mail as one feature of a set of personal assistant utilities that enhance your overall Skype experience;
• Skylook logs call recordings/voice mails into Outlook for individual PC archival purposes, integrated along with archiving of chat messages and call history within Outlook. In fact, with Skylook, you can manage all your Skype real time communications activity from Outlook and leave the Skype client in the System Tray
• Evoca offers online archiving with web access and RSS feeds for website, weblog and podcast reference along with transcription and translation services but no voice mail service.

And if you investigate the respective pricing models for each, you will find they represent various approaches to providing business-driven value-add.

Fourth: follow Lou’s Rules. From Lou Guercia’s presentation at the “Concepts to Cash” seminar:

• Rule #1: Develop a product that you’d like to use with Skype .. Something that enhances the user experience.
• Rule #2: Don’t forget Rule #1 (when you get into the actual development cycle)
• Rule #3: Keep It Simple Stupid (make implementation and operation intuitive)
• Rule #4: Offer free and paid solutions
• Rule #5: (not stated but implicit in his presentation) Bring your solution to Skype’s global user base in a way that requires no (or minimal) real-time tech support

Fifth: Use Web 2.0 tools and social networking to build your customer base:

While traditional SMB marketing programs will certainly bring results, a profitable business model for selling Skype Partner software involves leveraging Web 2.0 tools wherever feasible. Social networking has become a key business tool:

• From Alec Saunders’ Enterprise 2.0 Reflections: We’re onto something BIG!:

… the business of being an enterprise solution provider just got a lot harder. Over and over we heard repeated that the young bring their own networks and applications to business. And because these are mostly web based applications, not much can be done to contain them. Within a short period of time, we should expect millions upon millions of GMail, Facebook, and Skype users within every enterprise globally.

• Unyte grew its registered user base from 250,000 to 500,000 in six months simply through the visibility provided by Skype Extras
• “Staff increasingly dictating the corporate IT agenda”. This forum entry is consistent with a story I heard while having lunch at eBay Live about a Fortune 500 company that blocked Skype internally but all their field agents use Skype to communicate externally.
• Obtain third party reviews, especially in the blogosphere.

And from several comments heard at the developer conference:

• Employees start using Skype and bring it into the business
• Skype becomes a key communications tool for building business presence worldwide for small to medium businesses
• Business investigates Skype Business Partner Solution and adopts one or more solutions
• According to Unyte, each license drives four more Skype user registrations as the product infiltrates the business’s best practices

Skype’s introduction into (initially small-medium) businesses via products such as Convenos, Unyte and OnState is demonstrating that Skype Partner Solutions will be a primary driver for building the Skype user base going forward. When you hear of 100 license sales for Unyte and 200 to 400 license deals for Convenos, and leverage those into additional Skype user registrations, you start to recognize that business solutions incorporating Skype will become a key differentiator for Skype from other VoIP players and a key driver of new user adoption in what is becoming an otherwise very competitive market space.

Tags: Skype, Skype Software Developer Program, Pamela, Skylook, Unyte, Convenos, OnState, HighSpeedConferencing.com, VAPPS, Skype Extras, Evoca, Real Allusion, Crazy Talk, mesh07, Enterprise 2.0, SaundersLog, Alec Saunders

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