Two weeks ago in the post, Whither Skype Extras Today? Withered?, I asked for a clarification about the status of Skype Extras.

Today Skype announced a HotFix that effectively removes access to Skype Extras although it shows up, greyed out, in the Tools Menu. Go to Help | Check for Upgrades. In Windows Task Manager you’ll find that SkypePM.exe is no longer seen in the Processes tab.

As PamConsult’s Dick Schiferli points out in the comments below the Skype Extras do remain available in the Skype Store and are also available from the various publishers’ websites. However, the good news is that several publishers of Skype Extras have not withered away but rather have upgraded their products to remove their dependence on the Skype Extras program while introducing new features.

The Skype Extras Survivors

PamFax – winner of the 2007 Skype mashup competition, continues to grow; their recent infrastructure upgrade means that faxes are delivered within a minute of clicking on the Send Fax button. No ongoing obligations yet there are subscription programs that include a fax number in 27 countries. Send and received faxes to/from PC’s, iPhone/iPad/iPodTouch and Android. Fax Dropbox documents; receive faxes in DropBox. Click here for a complete update on PamFax,

InnerPass is releasing a new team collaboration product, Group Mix, that aggregates all their document management, persistent “rooms” and desktop sharing expertise into a web-based product with a great user interface that is easily accessed in any browser from, say, a bookmark. The first release includes voice connections in several countries via the PSTN; they will bring Skype back in shortly. More details will be forthcoming in a post early next week.

Pamela continues to upgrade and add more features to the longest running Skype Extra. Call recording, conversation archiving and many other nifty features that enhance the Skype user experience.

Netralia continues to offer its Skylook Outlook plugin that has done very well in the customer relationship management space. More recently they launched and have upgraded VodBurner, capable not only of recording Skype Video calls but also performing editing of the recording and direct upload to YouTube.

Evoca has been building their online audio recording and hosting business where you can call in from any phone, Skype or PC mic, record interviews and conference calls. From their website:

Dial any of our U.S. and international phone numbers or use the Evoca Skype Call Recorder — available for registered subscribers. Our 100% web service securely saves and stores your audio file in digital MP3 format in your online Evoca account. You can keep it private, share it with colleagues, or publish it online for the world to listen.

OnState continues to provide and grow its web-based, pay-as-you-go call center/PBX offering. In fact, in addition to its Skype integration, it now supports Google Talk and Salesforce.com amongst other features.

There may be others; I’ll be glad to add them. But these are the publishers who have managed to build on their user feedback and market acceptance. They have continued development to enhance their products which incorporate Skype integration but can operate independently of the Skype Extras infrastructure.

“Fring is not a communications platform, but only a toy or at best a testbed for shiny objects.”

Comment by Hudson Barton on Andy Abramson’s post: Fring Fumbles on Cross Platform Video Chat

In observing the evolution of Skype and third party access to it over the past few years I have often wondered how far Skype would go in allowing third party services to deploy Skype as one communications mode in a multi-service communications offering. Fring and Truphone are two examples. Usually these offerings figure out a way to put up a temporary Skype client on a “gateway” server and then build their own interface to the Skype client on that gateway.

There are issues of scalability, service quality (especially voice and video quality) and the overall user calling experience that could potentially compromise the user’s experience in taking advantage of the resulting Skype connection. It’s one thing to show that technically one can make the relevant voice and video connections but the challenges rise to a significantly higher level when taking into account the overall user experience.

Personally I look for services that allow me to easily find and select a contact, select the calling destination (Skype, Home, Mobile, Office, for example) and then click on either a soft button or the hardware green button and make the connection within a reasonable time (say, less than 30 seconds). I find the multi-service communications offerings to be a bit overbearing and almost too overwhelming for a non-technical business and consumer user.

Today there’s lots of coverage about Fring and its use of Skype (or now lack thereof); Dan York has provided an excellent summary of the various viewpoints in his post: Skype vs. Fring: Is Fring not telling the whole truth?. Very significant is the speed with which Skype’s Vice-President, Legal responded to get their side of the story out; their legal personnel usually have stayed out of the public discussion on any of Skype’s market-related issues.

But getting back to basics, there are three considerations:

Skype is Fundamentally Communications Software: we have heard this many times from Skype CEO Josh Silverman; he repeated and emphasized this during our CES conversation last January. As a result they own the intellectual property rights to their software. But they have been successful largely because they make much of their intellectual property available free – they can afford to do this since the capital overhead for Skype-to-Skype calling is so low. We as users provide the key piece by using Skype on our PC’s or other Skype-embedded hardware devices. On the other hand they need the intellectual property protection not only to defend potential revenues but just as importantly to defend their brand.

Best examples of this include:

• Skype video calling – here’s the 1964 AT&T World Fair concept now going out thirty-five years later with no charge for one-to-one video calling and being used on ~35% of Skype calls.
• Skype has also made their SILK codec available royalty-free provided the licensee meets performance criteria. As demonstrated with Skype for iPhone over 3G, SILK has the potential to revolutionize voice quality on mobile calling (and I’ll pay one or two dollars per month just to have the superior voice quality after many years of mobile phone calls with somewhat challenging audio quality ). Blabbelon provides an excellent example of incorporating SILK.
• Skype mobile on Verizon: here is a software development and licensing agreement that generates sustainable revenue streams for both parties while delivering a significant benefit, namely free calling to Skype contacts worldwide, to Verizon customers when calling from the U.S.
• With the success of Skype as a commercial TV production platform, Skype has developed special licensing terms for users of this application.

The bottom line is that all these, including making basic Skype-to-Skype calls using the standard Skype clients, involve some form of license agreement that is being adhered to.

Skype is Ultimately About The User Experience: Skype’s brand focuses well beyond the enabling technology to incorporate the entire user experience. It was ease of installation and use that allowed Skype to be adopted so readily such that over 600 million user accounts have been created with around 100 million active users. Skype’s VP for Mobile, Russ Shaw, re-emphasized this during our conversation at CES. We witness this in the recent launches of Skype mobile on Verizon and Skype for iPhone over 3G. While I can only rely on third party reporting about the former (not being in the U.S.) which has largely been positive, for the latter I simply installed the software, looked up a contact, clicked on the Call button and made this excellent quality call to the U.K. using Skype for iPhone over 3G. Woops, did I mention the quality of the call again? Overall both applications set a higher standard for the user experience.

Skype is Opening Up to Developers: Yes, there has been a rough ride for developers over the past four years. PamConsult, Netralia, InnerPass and OnState have persisted with their offerings and have demonstrated the potential for Skype and third party applications. But the recent launch of SkypeKit beta – in a phased program to ensure control over quality and service level issues as the program evolves – opens up significant opportunities for third party developers. Suffice it to say that I know we can expect not only significant software partner offerings but also some innovative hardware offerings based on SkypeKit. Once again, however, there are licensing guidelines to ensure the integrity of Skype’s brand.

But the bottom line is this: sure Skype reserves the right to generate revenues where they see a significant value-add market opportunity but even with their free offerings they want and need to preserve their brand image. It would appear from Skype’s legal executive’s comments that they have been trying to work out a way to interact with Fring without success; Fring has certainly been around for over three years in one form or another, including attending Skype-sponsored events. As Andy Abramson says:

As we all know there are three sides to every story, but given Fring took the shot first, an old rule of thumb in a legal battle is get the word out first. And Fring did. Now Skype, whose legal minds are based on the West Coast, as well as their platform team and video folks for the most part have gotten in and replied.

We now are starting to get a better handle on how Skype will establish the playing field for third party applications, hardware and services. The evolution of the Fring relationship (or lack thereof) will provide a concrete example of how far Skype will go in allowing third party affiliations.

Full disclosure: yes, I tried Fring several times in the past (when it had Skype access). Simply put, I never found a way to use it comfortably and abandoned it. I have used iSkoot successfully in the past; however, they no longer support current BlackBerry platforms. But all this flurry does generate the background for a future post on what I would look for in a mobile smartphone calling experience.

Re Truphone: I mentioned Truphone at the beginning of this post as another example of a third party service that offers Skype as one communication mode. I’ll have more to say on my Truphone experiences – both favorable and unfavorable in a separate post. At least I find it a reliable backup when I have no other choice for calling.

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• Skype, Fring throw punches over iPhone hang up (reviews.cnet.com)
• Fring removes Skype functionality, then says Skype blocked it (downloadsquad.com)
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• Fring for iPhone now blocked from Skype. (thenextweb.com)
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In two separate press releases over the past two days, OnState Communications has broadened the scope of its call center offering and made it more readily accessible to businesses without internal IT and communications support.

In the first press release Monday, OnState announced the addition of the Yuuguu screen sharing service that provides call center agents with a tool that facilitates both visual presentations and resolution of customer support issues. Yuuguu’s screen sharing allows a call center agent to have a real time collaboration tool with:

• on demand screen sharing
• moderator control of adding/removing participants
• sharing of keyboard and mouse control amongst participants
• easy escalation of a chat session to desktop sharing
• no download requirement for callers to participate

One significant point: recall that OnState’s chat service, while originating from an agent’s Skype or GTalk account, can be accessed by any caller with a web browser. Once again, using Yuuguu’s screen sharing, an agent can have a screen sharing session with any caller with access to a web browser. Yuuguu’s service is cross-platform, supporting both Windows and Mac PC’s with Linux support to come soon.

From the press release, OnState Partnership with Yuuguu Provides Total Customer Collaboration For Virtual Workforces:

OnState is the first and only provider to include integrated voice, text chat and screen sharing as part of a cost-effective, on-demand virtual communications service. The addition of Yuuguu into OnState’s solution enables sales and support staff and all virtual workers to collaborate with customers by sharing screens or even keyboard and mouse control to help demonstrate solutions or solve problems.

“With Yuuguu screen sharing capabilities, OnState users can now conduct virtual sales calls – from anywhere in the world – with visual presentations, product demonstrations, and interactive communications,” said Pat Kelly, CEO of OnState. “And using real-time screen, keyboard and mouse sharing, support staff can resolve issues, answer questions, and assist customers more efficiently. Best of all, the combined solution is delivered as a secure, device-independent, cloud-based service that requires no installation or embedded applications on the customer side.”

In a second announcement yesterday, OnState announced a partnership with Bandwidth.com as a complete end-to-end IP-based communications service over which a business can operate its entire OnState call center operation “in the cloud”. Basically, if an end user can plug an RJ-45 jack into an Internet service modem or connection, and plug IP-based phones into a router, they can have all the communications infrastructure required for using the OnState service. And  inherently the network supports additional communications modes such as chat and screen sharing, as well as Skype conversations.

Once again call center agents can be located anywhere geographically and access the service via a phone, softphone on a PC, including Skype or GTalk, or mobile phone. While Bandwidth.com is U.S.-based they provide international access with support for international numbers via Voxbone’s service. From the press release, OnState and Bandwidth.com Deliver the Cloud Call Center:

For companies that rely on call centers for sales or customer support, reliability and quality-of-service are key. Bandwidth’s FlexNetwork is architected with full geographic redundancy, with separate signalling and audio facilities for reliability and flexibility. When this is combined with OnState’s cost-effective virtual communications, the resulting solution is one that is highly available, easily scalable, and encourages customer collaboration through multi-modal interfaces like voice, chat, and web.

OnState’s core competence is call center functionality; having come from a legacy call center operation that was acquired by Cisco, it’s in their genes. But as for the underlying communications services, they are becoming more and more agnostic by giving their customers options to select the underlying service provider as well as the communications clients, whether they be a traditional phone set, a mobile phone or a software-based communications client, such as available from Skype or GTalk. It’s a case of the customer defining its requirements and OnState can provide a solution from a buffet of options while delivering on the economic advantages of IP-based communications.

But OnState’s ultimate advantage comes from making it possible for their customers’ customers to access a call center via a simple call from a phone, mobile phone, Skype, GTalk or a Click-to-Call button on a website. And, where the caller has PC access, adding modalities such as chat or screen sharing requires no customer downloads; it just happens via the browser. As highlighted at this fall’s eComm Europe, the value-add comes in minimizing user friction with intelligent decision making tools that value a customer’s time.

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Over the past two weeks we have started to see signs of a transition period for Skype’s developer support activities. Yes, Skype Extras is dead; however the current Skype API’s remain supported. Jonathan Christensen gave Michael Arrington at TechCrunch some hints of forthcoming developer support activity.  Skype for Asterisk was launched three weeks ago. All this builds on the “Skype Everywhere” theme announced last January at CES 2009.

And whither the Skype for SIP activity whose beta program was launched six months ago? Over the past two weeks we have seen a couple of Skype for SIP launch partner interoperability announcements incorporating Skype interoperability into their Unified Communications offerings:

• the initial announcement covered incorporation of Skype interoperability as a feature for Shoretel’s 11,000 enterprise customers using Shoretel’s IP Phone Systems.
• this was followed by an announcement of incorporation into the SIPfoundry’s open source enterprise IP PBX unified communications solution for organizations running a sipXecs IP PBX.

But today’s announcement of Skype for SIP interoperability with Cisco’s Unified Communications 500 Series for Small Business opens up significant new markets for Skype through Cisco’s extensive worldwide reseller channels. From the press release:

“Cisco is committed to delivering easy-to-use technology to small businesses to help them run their business better and gain a competitive advantage,” said Mark Monday, vice president and general manager, Small Business Solutions business unit, Cisco. “We are excited about Skype for SIP interoperability since it adds a very cost-effective choice to the many other options within the Cisco Unified Communications 500 Series.”

Note that Cisco VARS will be required to register for a new Skype Service Partner certification program covering configuration of the Cisco solution to support Skype for SIP. And that the Skype for SIP interoperability with the Cisco 500 Series goes through third party certification at tekVizion Labs, an independent interoperability testing facility in Richardson, Texas.

In all three cases Skype for SIP increases the enterprise’s or organization’s worldwide communications choices while reducing costs through:

• taking advantage of Skype’s interconnection to the PSTN that provides low cost (SkyepOut) calling to most countries worldwide
• receiving inbound calls from Skype users via a global click-to-call button on the enterprise’s or organization’s website
• receiving inbound calls via Skype Online numbers in 25 countries (previously SkypeIn)
• interoperation of these features with all the other features of the PBX offerings of  Shoretel, sipFoundry and Cisco’s 500 Series, such as call transfer, call forwarding, voicemail, etc.

For organizations and enterprises, the availability of Skype for SIP, Skype for Asterisk and the Skype API’s used by Skype’s other business communications partners, such as OnState and Scendix (PamFax), brings about significant overhead benefits. This offering:

• ensures that, with one service, the enterprise can achieve low cost calling to any country worldwide without the need to mange and use country- or region-specific calling plans offered by the legacy PSTN telcos.
• eliminates a layer of communications cost overhead through the value-add of making all Skype’s global termination agreements available through one source via the various Skype for Business partners’ distribution and reseller channels.

Bottom Line: These announcements all build on Skype’s “Skype Everywhere” strategy. The key point here is that, going forward, Skype’s developer and partner activities will focus on transitioning business markets into Skype services by Skype-enabling legacy communications services and platforms, complementing its prior focus on applications that bring about communications enhanced business processes.

As predicted last spring these announcements execute on Business Long Distance: Death by 1,000,000 PBX’s.

Dan York says “Congrats to Skype and Cisco on this announcement”.

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On Friday the Skype Developer Blog posted a blog announcing the end of the Skype Extras program in what amounts to two stages:

1. Immediately: No new partner programs or upgrades will be placed into the Skype Extras
2. Going forward: Skype Extras will remain available via the Skype for Windows client until their certification expires (which may be up to a year).

Effectively, Skype has admitted that the Skype Extras program has not been a great success as a marketing tool. “Despite the incredible breadth of Extras developed for Skype, simply not enough people were using them to justify our continued support of the Extras programme.”

However, as indicated by a Skype Software Partner’s tweet above, Skype’s developer support will be continuing. Why?

In the same announcement, it was stated that the Skype Public API’s and their documentation remain available; more importantly, it was stated that “Skype will continue to support accessories via the Public API.”

But the uniformed media fallout has been attempting to put “doom and gloom” for Skype developer activities going forward. However, had Skype personnel worked with their PR agency who has been very adept at educating both mainstream media and bloggers with the background on Skype announcements, this “doom and gloom” cloud could have been avoided. (No press release was issued; so we have to assume Skype’s PR agency was not consulted.) Some of this “missing” information is in my recent post: “Skype Extras” Is Dead; Long Live the Skype API’s!.

Here are some of the myths that have resulted along with some of the facts that dispel them:

Myth: GigaOm: Skype kills its developer ecosystem: While it is true that “if you put your lot with Skype then you are on your own” for the marketing aspect of a software partner’s offering, the Skype API’s are not going away. And Skype is finally reviewing how it can work best with developers. Some considerations:

• Last fall, Skype announced the appointment of Daniel Berg as Chief Technology Officer. In the spring they announced the appointment of former Counterpath CTO Jason Fischl as Director of Developer Relations heading up the Skype Developer Program. Maybe their silence to date says something about their evaluation of the previous Skype developer activity and their need to take time to articulate an overall Skype platform within which the Skype SDK and Skype API’s will be playing a role. Most importantly, my network’s jungle drums say they are still very active within Skype.
• Check out this job opening for a Platform Release Manager that starts out with “You will be responsible for planning and releasing each new version of the Skype SDK used as part of the upcoming Platform strategy.”
• The Skype post itself ended with: “we still believe there are opportunities for third-party developers to enhance the Skype experience”.

As implied in the OnState tweet above, and confirmed by my own conversations with other Skype partners, we should be looking forward to new enhancements to the Skype Developer Program and the Skype SDK. But maybe Skype should have filled in media and bloggers with this information via their PR network instead of bluntly announcing the end of a support program with no offsetting information.

Myth: Skype is eating its software partners. Andy Abramson, VoIP Watch, Skype Shutting Down Extras Program: “Skype will begin offering more services that are labelled as Skype vs from third parties”. What this really should read  is:

Skype will begin offering more services expanding on its core “conversation” technology expertise and will be looking to third parties to complement their core services by incorporating Skype into offerings that leverage the individual partners’ unique expertise.

For instance:

• Skype for Asterisk (developed by Skype partner Digium) and Skype for SIP will be integrating Skype’s calling and presence functionality into “legacy” platforms as they evolve the Skype for Business program. Expect to hear more at Christopher Dean’s talk at Fall VON next week in Miami.
• As initially indentified by Phil, the Skype Jobs listings include some for a new “Skype Labs” location:
  

  Skype Labs is a new R&D center located in the Bay Area focused on next generation technologies for Skype which will be applicable over the next one to five years. The initial areas of work will include security, signaling and call control for audio, video and presence, p2p and collaboration.

• However, OnState brings decades of call center experience into their Call Center – an application for which Skype has neither the experience nor bandwidth to develop. (Full disclosure: the author is involved with a new small business that will be using OnState’s Call Center as a paying customer.)
• PamFax brings a simple five or six step process for sending faxes worldwide from any PC. Having followed the development of this service over the past two years, they have built a system that solves the basic faxing problem in a user friendly, yet highly secure, manner. Once again Skype has neither the expertise nor bandwidth to address this issue. (And Scendix, PamFax’s developer who was the only third party using Skype Credits to any extent, has already made plans for other payment services when they launched version 2.0 last spring).
• Looking at Skype Jobs, one finds the engineering jobs are focused on evolving Skype’s core functionality: video codecs, video QA engineer, audio components, director of mobile engineering, etc.
• The Product Manager – Applications job description includes responsibility for:
  • Extras like call recording and faxing. (Is Skype going to make an offer for veteran Skype software partner Scendix?)
  • Partner integrations with CRM, Security, Collaboration and similar applications (insert Call Center here).

Bottom line:

• Recent Skype successes include their High Quality Video (nobody has duplicated their ability to do VGA-standard video calling over standard broadband connections) and the SILK codec for higher quality Skype-to-Skype voice calling.
• Expect a multi-party video conferencing service, improved audio and video services and hardware (for instance, finding partners such as client In Store Solutions whose FREETALK Everyman headset addresses an identified end user issue with respect to call quality in a user-friendly way).
• Skype will continue to seek out partners, such as Scendix (Pamela and PamFax), Digium, Skylook (CRM), OnState and InnerPass (document management), who incorporate Skype into a range of business services where the partner has significant expertise that can complement Skype’s core conversation technologies via their API’s (both existing and future).
• Skype’s current Partners are seeing business success:
  • Unyte and VAPPS have been acquired by IBM’s Lotus Sametime Division and Citrix Online respectively
  • OnState is finding its Call Center offering stealthing into larger enterprises due to not only its feature set but also its cost saving
  • PamFax 2.0 has been a most successful launch; Pamela 4.6 was recently launched with video recording.
  • InnerPass has had over 1 million version 1.0 downloads since January. Watch this space for future announcements.
• Statements to the effect that “Skype is abandoning/axing its developer partners” are a myth; once more it’s a case of Skype’s managing their communications onto the blogger space. Memo to Skype: Work with your PR agency (who has done an excellent job over the past two years) and the complete message can get out.

Question: What should Skype really be doing for developer support programs going forward? A recent TechCrunch post by Michael Arrington, some of Andy’s other comments and some comments in Skype Journal’s Skype 5.x Public Chat (Phil’s rushing it – this was the Skype 4.x Public Chat until a week ago) provide some hints. A post will follow.

P.S. – Do you have communications technology and/or marketing experience? It seems like Skype is doing its part to stimulate the economy. Check out the Skype Job Vacancies page where, today, over 60 job openings are listed (some listings are actually for multiple hires).

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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.

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In a story on VoIP Planet, Gerry Blackwell provides a case study of the implementation of OnState’s Virtual Call Center at CyberDefender Corp., an Internet security software and services firm.

CyberDefender’s new director of customer service, Jose Martinez, investigated a few solutions, including traditional Panasonic and Nortel automatic call distribution (ACD) systems. But in the end, Martinez chose a radical on-demand service from start-up OnState Communications, and coupled it with VoIP service from Skype.

“OnState was very competitive,” he says. “But not only was it priced right—and this was very important to us—they were able to implement very quickly.” It took barely a week to get agents up and running and trained.

Gerry goes on to talk about the cost savings over traditional premise-based and hosted call center solutions, the visibility and transparency of the call center activity in real time and the ability to rapidly scale the service as they add more staff. He then quotes OnState CEO Pat Kelly:

“Conversation management and knowing about people are the most important elements in our application,” says OnState CEO Pat Kelly. “We’re interested in phones, but the problems our customers come to us with are not really about phones.”

“We’re more concerned with understanding the business presence of employees. What can they do—what skills do they have, what kinds of calls can they answer? And what are they doing at this moment. Are they at work today? Are they free? Are they involved in a chat? Are they on a phone call?”

Read the entire article to learn more about how OnState handles calls, its integration with Skype and Google Talk, the competition (such as it is), costs and OnState’s DNA that underlies its legitimacy as a call center solution.

Bottom Line: A win for CyberDefender and a win for their customers with improved customer service and an ability to scale appropriately as demand varies over time. And a a Voice 2.0 world application where Skype is contributing to business model disruption.

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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.

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• 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)
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• Skype Modifies Fair Usage Policy (voiceontheweb.biz)

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 Communications provides hosted communications services that allow any size of business to operate a call center or PBX with low cost worldwide access via Skype, Skype Online numbers or the PSTN, including toll-free and DID numbers. Low monthly fees and service charges (covering inbound numbers and outbound PSTN calling) along with zero capital expenditures are the selling points that have driven evaluation and adoption across a range of businesses.

During early May OnState will be upgrading their services to add:

• a “My Account” dashboard that tracks credits and charges for services such as toll-free numbers and SkypeOut charges in real time
• OnState Mobile allows employees to use their mobile phones (such as iPhone and BlackBerry) to participate as part of a call center operation, either directly receiving customer calls, transferring to another employee in the company, or acting as a secondary support resource to a business’s core sales and support teams
• Warm Transfer and Conferencing for OnState Anywhere — A warm transfer allows an agent to speak with a new caller before transferring the original caller to provide a better calling experience.
• Outbound calling with Caller ID in OnState Anywhere. Enables calling from any device (Skype, SIP soft phone, etc) with a unique Caller ID displayed to your customers.
• Support for SIP Phones. While most calls are handled via softphones, such as the Skype client, OnState services now support selected Polycomm and Grandstream SIP phone sets.
• Several other service tweeks and modifications; check out the OnState blog post for the details.

OnState will be upgrading services to all their current clients over the first ten days of May. As with many other players in the economically challenged Voice 2.0 world, I confirmed in a recent interview with OnState CEO Pat Kelly that they are finding increasing demand in the small-to-medium business market for their SaaS-based services. The key selling point remains offering a disruptively cost effective way to communicate across an enterprise ecosystem comprising employees, customers and suppliers.

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Following a link from Dan York’s update to his post outlining technical details of Skype for SIP, I found a link to this post from IfByPhone’s Irv Shapiro: Why Skype for Asterisk is more important than Skype for SIP.

First, Irv has done perhaps the best articulation yet differentiating Skype for Asterisk from Skype for SIP:

Skype for Asterisk, which is still in closed beta, is a true Asterisk channel driver. This allows Asterisk based solutions to make, receive and transfer Skype calls. A significant capability of the SFA solution is its support for terminating a call to a Skype user name, for example a PC based user of the Skype client.

Skype for SIP is a very different animal. This service provides VOIP trunk support for existing SIP based PBX systems, which may include Asterisk. Unlike SFA where calls may be placed to any Skype user, SFS calls may only be terminated to PSTN end points.

Irv goes on to provide his view on how this plays in the Voice/Telco 2.0 marketplace. Then he provides an example of where he sees the benefit of SFA for hosted services:

From our perspective as a cloud telephony company, providing hosted telephone applications, SFA is much more interesting. While either service would allow us to provide IVR services to Skype users, the SFA Asterisk channel driver architecture allows us to terminate calls into call centers with no PSTN transport. Each call center Agent would just utilize a headset connected to a computer running the traditional Skype application. Customers calls would be able to originate from either a PSTN device or a Skype client, then route through the Ifbyphone IVR infrastructure and terminate to a call center via Skype’s computer to computer transport. This has the potential to change the cost structure associated with supporting call centers. A Skype based call center would not require a PBX or for even any centralized telephony components. The call center agents could be virtually located anywhere in the world on high quality Internet connections.

Keep in mind that calls terminated on Skype, as demonstrated on the 3 Skypehone service, have no associated termination charges. Long time Skype-based call center provider OnState has already demonstrated this business model; their hosted OnState Call Center service eliminates the need for a call center PBX. While a (prospective) customer can call in via several modes (Skype Online number, DID numbers, 800 numbers, Skype or click-to-call from a website), all the calls are terminated on Skype via their agent client.

Andy Abramson at VoIP Watch has, in a reverse manner, demonstrated this cost advantage also in his post, All Google Voice Needs Is a Little More SIP and Skype’s Game Changes, where he points out that, if Skype for SIP did terminate calls on a Skype client (i.e. – supported SIP—>Skype), then one could terminate Google Voice calls at a Skype client. But, as I have commented on that post and included in Skype for SIP: Sorting Through the Issues, Skype for SIP supports three types of connections and “SIP—>Skype” is not one of them.

Irv demonstrates that Skype for Asterisk has some interesting potential; it’s simply going to require more creative innovation that goes beyond simply making call connections through a SIP interface. It’s a matter of invoking Alec Saunders Voice 2.0 Manifesto which points out that the value lies in the applications.

Skype announces launch of a beta version of Skype for SIP, connecting IP-PBX’s to the Skype cloud.

Dan York, while a keen supporter of Skype, has been campaigning for a Skype to SIP interconnect on his Disruptive Telephony blog. In a post last fall, “Skype and SIP – the two sides of the issue raised by Michael Robertson”, he says:

We need to build the interconnect.

Yeah, there are a TON of issues out there that we still need to address to build that interconnect. There’s a whole host of security issues… there are billing issues… there are trust issues… there are network plumbing issues. Yes, there are all those issues. But if we are to succeed in ultimately bringing about the rich communication experience we want, we need to make this happen.

And for that, Skype’s walls need to come down…. at least a bit.

What we need is that Interconnect from Skype’s cloud out to the emerging IP infrastructure. Think about it… Skype right now has a two-way interconnect between Skype’s cloud and the cloud we know as the PSTN. It’s called “SkypeOut” and “SkypeIn” (or whatever marketing names they are being called now). If you dial my SkypeIn number, you can reach me on Skype wherever I am. From my Skype client, I can call anyone on the PSTN. The two-way interconnect is already there.

This morning Skype announced the launch of a beta version of Skype for SIP as a major initiative for further penetration into the business market. Basically Skype for SIP allows SIP PBX owners to access the Skype cloud as additional inbound lines , via Skype Online numbers, and outbound extensions to their existing PBX, via SkypeOut. From the press release:

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.

In an interview with Skype Senior Product Manager Chris Moore, I learned:

• Skype’s’ goal will be to have a totally user friendly interface such that Skype for SIP is a seamless service
• Administration will be done through an extended Skype Business Control Panel interface which, amongst other activities will establish Skype for SIP account mapping, manage online numbers and perform appropriate configuration for the various PBX’s.
• Skype will be looking to work with the various SIP PBX and Unified Communications vendors, such as Cisco, Avaya, Nortel and Siemens. When I asked about Microsoft Response Point, which had been demonstrated to me the previous day, Chris confirmed, yes, they were another prospective vendor to be approached.
• during the beta, Skype will be used on a pay-as-you-go basis; pricing for the service once it is launched has yet to be determined
• Skype will be including security issues as one major consideration (I expect Dan York to have more to say on this issue)
• The service will be configured to take advantage of Skype’s royalty free SILK codec; if both endpoints of a call support SILK, then the SILK support will carry across the Skype for SIP interface.

This has to be a landmark announcement for the IP-based communications space. It effectively allows businesses to integrate the Skype cloud into existing infrastructure to handle all long distance and international calling. Some other initial observations:

• Does Skype for SIP impact the space currently served by Vosky’s PBX services?  It definitely leaves open for Vosky the analog PBX market; one question will be how does Vosky figure out a way to work Skype for SIP into their business activities and offerings during the six- to twelve-month beta?
• It’s currently a beta; applicants for beta participation can apply at www.skypeforsip.com. From the press release: “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.”
• Skype also expects to determine an appropriate distribution channel. While ease-of-use is a key goal, there will still be small business owners who will want third party expertise to manage their communications activities. So expect Skype to look to a VAR or Systems Integrator channel to support implementation.
• Skype for SIP broadens Skype’s penetration into the small-to-medium business market. Where Skype for Asterisk introduces a Skype feature-rich Asterisk channel to Asterisk PBX’s, Skype for SIP simply brings Skype cloud connectivity to a major subset of existing small business PBX installations.
• Along another feature axis we see hosted services vs on-premise implementations. Will widely geographically distributed small businesses favor a hosted service, such as OnState’s Virtual PBX, or one of these on-premise PBX offerings.

One sure call: the market for business long distance, especially international calling, is about to be radically disrupted as these services come into play. It brings about new business opportunities and, most significantly, makes any business a global business, if the will is there. With probably over one million IP PBX’s out there (Skype’s press release says over 438,000 were sold in 2008 along), Skype for SIP brings the slow but sure death of legacy international calling, one PBX at a time.

And, of course, Dan York brings his deep perspective, not only on how Skype for SIP works, but also on the security and codec issues surronding Skype for SIP: Skype tears down more walls with “Skype For SIP”.

When Skype’s Unlimited Calling Plans were modified last May, the only “Fair Usage” limitation was 10,000 minutes per month on any of the plans. Recently my attention was drawn to a modified Fair Usage policy. Primarily it would appear that the new Fair Usage policy would apply to businesses using SkypeOut for customer service and customer acquisition activities.

The new policy adds:

• calling to a maximum of 50 numbers per day
• maximum six (6) hours of SkypeOut calling per day
• each subscription is to be used by one person only and not to be shared with any other user (whether by a PBX, call center, computer or any other means).

On considering these further:

• a user can make repeated calls to a single number without impacting the “50 numbers per day” limitation
• each employee using call center or PBX services, such as OnState’s Call Center or Virtual PBX requires a separate Skype calling plan subscription for outbound calling
• the six hour per day limitation could build up quickly on a Skype multi-party call with multiple participants connected via SkypeOut
• these limitations only impact Skype services where third party termination charges are involved – all Skype-to-Skype calling remains free
• they would not appear to affect services such as Skype Trunking via a Vosky Exchange where they talk only about “call Skype users for free” and “low cost SkypeOut rates as low as 2.2 cents per minute to most landlines worldwide”

Upon exceeding any of these limits, normal SkypeOut rates and connection fees will apply for additional minutes, Of course this requires that you have Skype credits available; otherwise you may find a call cut off in the middle of a heavy conversation.

Two observations:

• When business is generating revenue or providing support via Skype’s outbound services, one should expect some cost. Skype continues to provide competitive rates for reliable, robust business calling.
• New Skype management is obviously reviewing all its business activities with a view to ensuring that consumer users can continue to benefit from the low cost of services available via Skype Calling Plans while those who are incurring heavy termination fees (and other costs) will support the cost of such usage levels.

Hat tip to participants in the Skype 4.x Discussion Public Chat for bringing this to my attention.

Update: UberOverLord developer Don Kennedy has published “Subscription Monitor for Skype” to track your Skype subscription usage in real time.

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OnState’s Virtual PBX incorporates Skype as a contributor to lower cost, yet more productive, small business communications management activities.

A mainstay for communications in any office with at least a few employees is the need to accept incoming calls, determine who is calling, what is their general need and getting the call to the right employee. In the interest of effective and productive customer and supplier relations, calls need an automated way to reach sales personnel, customer care, accounting  or technical support or “the boss”. Preferably this call management should be handled without any human intervention; over the past twenty or more years this has resulted in the evolution of increasingly effective Private Branch Exchange (“PBX”) offerings from telecomm equipment suppliers. And it traditionally required a reasonably demanding capital expense, from $15,000 up.

The basic functions of a PBX include:

• Receiving and answering a call from an external caller
• Offering a menu of options to determine to whom the call should be connected
• Transferring the call in response to answers provided either by entering alphanumeric or dialpad information or by using speech recognition.
• Accepting, recording and managing voice mails if nobody is available to take a call
• Ability to make a subsequent call transfer if deemed necessary

However, IP-based communications technology along with web 2.0 tools provide opportunities for enhancing the PBX to build more productive and effective business processes when it comes to managing relationships with both suppliers and customers. For instance:

• An individual agent portal for overall conversation management
• Intelligent call queuing would permit an “occupied” employee to either put a caller into a queue for answering when available or transfer a caller to another employee with the skills to handle the call
• Chat sessions can be offered as either an alternative or complement to voice conversations
• Building a searchable call archive integrated into an email system such as GMail.
• Making call transfer destinations independent of the recipient’s geographical location, whether “in the office”, at a home office or out “on the road”.
• Reducing and minimizing the costs associated with various PBX services.

Building on its Call Center experience OnState has launched its Virtual PBX which provides all this functionality as well as:

• Receives calls via Skype, SkypeIn as well as Local DID numbers and toll free numbers in over 20 countries
• Call transfer to employees, agents and other designated recipients on their Skype-enabled PC, landline phones or mobile independent of geographical location
• An extension-based agent/employee/representative portal for managing incoming calls, including call waiting notification, queuing and redirection
• Integration into GMail, Zimbra and Salesforce.com

A few weeks ago, OnState CEO Pat Kelly was our guest on a SquawkBox conference call where he provided more details about OnState’s Virtual PBX, including a sharable slide show presentation accessible as a Google document.

Bottom line; for as little as $15 per month per seat and no capital investment, small to medium enterprises and organizations as well can establish an enhanced PBX capability to facilitate both more productive business processes as well as more cost effective communications.

Definitely a business model disrupter.

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This is the fourth in a series of posts resulting from an interview a week ago Friday with Josh Silverman, Skype’s recently appointed President. In this post we talk about addressing the small-to-medium business market as well as various geographical markets.

Over its five years, Skype has built up, almost totally virally, a significant base of users who take advantage of Skype to not only reduce their business communications costs but also to communicate more effectively with colleagues and customers around the world. At the same time various Skype software partners have built offerings, such as Pamela, PamFax and Skylook, that either focus on Skype as a business communications tool or include Skype amongst their options for calling. Within Skype’s own offerings, the Business Control Panel provides the tools for a system administrator to handle both the deployment of Skype and the administration of Skype accounts within a business’s operations.OnState is a primary example of the latter. They have built up a call center offering that takes full advantage of both instant messaging chat and voice in dealing with both inbound and outbound calls; they also take advantage of the three founders’ combined over sixty years’ experience participating in the call center market. Yet, they encountered many opportunities where they had to go back to Skype for assistance since, for one reason or another, Skype’s program were insufficient to address business users’ requirement. The result is that today OnState offers their customers “one stop shopping” whereby, on acquiring a customer, OnState takes on responsibility for addressing Skype subscription needs, hardware requirements (headsets and handsets, implementation issues and first level technical support.

The Business Control Panel has had its limitations also; the main fear has been to mitigate potential for fraudulent or unauthorized activity through purchasing and licensing limits.

As for geographical markets, Skype met a much larger need for communications cost reductions in Europe and Asia than in North America. As a result over 80% of Skype’s revenues continue to come from outside the U.S. The two primary needs met in North America are for “Friends and Family” calling outside North America and small businesses who are working to grow internationally – both internally and with their suppliers and customers.

In growing internationally, there has been the challenge of building user bases in widely diverse markets; “free”, “easy-to-install” and a whole lot of viral marketing action have introduced significant adoption around the world. But this success has led to more business-oriented challenges in working out termination agreements, establishing effective multi-currency transaction systems (although being an eBay co-unit of PayPal certainly helps), multiple language versions of software (27 at last count) and providing multi-lingual, internationally available technical support. (We’ll talk about marketing and more about technical support in future posts in this series.)

We asked Josh about the Skype’s approach to the business market:

JS: Skype in the business market. There’s more that needs to be done. (you guys are smart, you’re asking all the right questions). Platform is a huge opportunity for us; business is another big opportunity for us. About half of the communications market is business; we have a great solution, especially for small-to-medium size businesses. We haven’t tailored that solution to businesses very much; we haven’t communicated to businesses that we have that solution. In the new organizational design one of the pieces of that will be to build out a business unit focused on small-to-medium size businesses where we’ll have some resources available to tailor our product and some sales and marketing resources to work … I don’t think that we’ll be directly selling to small-to-medium size businesses but we can work with VAR’s to help support them in bringing Skype to businesses.

(Note this interview occurred two weeks prior to last week’s announcement of Skype for Asterisk, a program that leverages Digium’s Asterisk reseller channel for sales, implementation and ongoing support requirements.)

We then moved on to ask about various geographical markets:

SJ: North America. (Thank God for Oprah!) Skype has become much more a household name this past year (with an acknowledgement to Don Albert, GM North America). What does it take to keep that business going forward in U.S. and Canada and what are the strategies for U.S. and Canada?

JS: We’re very aware that the number one way to grow Skype is to build products the users love. That is our first mandate always. Once you have a product users love, we can accelerate it by some smart marketing programs. (By the way if you don’t have a product that users love no amount of marketing on earth will save you, right?) So we do have a product that users love and I don’t think we have done as much as we could to communicate that.

Oprah is a great example. It is not our intention and people should not expect massive multi-million dollar marketing budgets from Skype. But there are some smart tactical things we can do working together with evangelists like Oprah to build awareness. It’s our belief that once you’ve grown awareness, people will try it; once they try it they’ll love it. and the rest takes care of itself. At the Democratic national convention we were quite happy to see many of the national broadcasters using Skype as a way to expand their coverage and you should be looking for more programs like that in the United States in the year to come.

SJ: China is your biggest market?

JS: In terms of total users it’s one of our top markets; the answer is yes.

SJ: QQ is still kicking butt in China? What strategy do you have in your existing partnership with Tom?

JS: We have a great partnership with Tom who knows the local market very well. Tom is also a very entrepreneurial, innovative, fast moving company. We’re very pleased to be partnering with them; they’re the right partner to continue building our presence in China.

SJ: Do you have your own people in Asia?

JS: A couple of people in Asia who work with our partners to make sure they’re getting the support they need and also giving us real feedback from the market on what we need to be doing on [our] core platform to be able to support Asia better.

SJ: How about India?

JS: We don’t have anyone working in India. We don’t have a partnership in India to announce but we are seeing good growth in India but we think it’s a terrific market and we are expecting to have more focus on that in 2009

My observation, five months in, [is that] markets where Skype has the most power are markets where you have high broadband connectivity, you have a large ex-pat population, and where the local telephony system is not as efficient as it could be. Many of the developing markets meet that profile so we think we have a huge opportunity in developing markets such as India and it’s our intention to focus more on that in the coming year.

SJ: To succeed in the mobile market place, mobile device manufacturers have had to build carrier relationships. What does Skype need to do with either handset manufacturers and/ or carriers to succeed in the mobile market?

JS: I don’t think the carriers should be able to dictate what software the users get to use. any company,. the smallest startup in the world, if it has really outstanding software ought to be able to take on the whole world and not have to hire 50 people to develop relationships with 300 carriers.

This is the fourth in a series of posts resulting from an interview a week ago Friday with Josh Silverman, Skype’s recently appointed President. In this post we talk about directions for the Skype platform and partner programs.

When I first attended a Skype developer event in June 2006, there was lots of enthusiasm for the Skype partner program and for its integration into various third party applications and service offerings. Several of the feature requests, such as call transfer and access to the voice stream, that had come to the surface by the time of this event, have since been implemented. In December 2006 Skype announced the Skype Extras program for which there are over 100 offerings available, mostly for the consumer user but the list also includes about ten in the small-to-medium business space. Most importantly, partners have been asking not only for a platform roadmap but also for execution on that roadmap.Skype Extras included a publishing and transaction platform, yet to date, only PamConsult has taken full advantage of these feature for its well received (and award winning) PamFax offering. On the other hand, OnState has been able to figure out how to provide a friction-free full services program for its call center customer base. However, over the past eight months market visibility of any significance for the entire Skype partner program has just not been there. Yet we see “Skype access” continue to be built into various platforms such as Ribbit and Voxeo. Skype Certification exists for only seventeen offerings. InnerPass has received Skype Certification two weeks ago (review). At IT Expo last week in Los Angeles I came across several service providers and application developers who wanted to have a Skype presence in their offerings.

On the hardware side there have been many innovative offerings; I have experienced many of them. As confirmed by 3 executives at last Thursday’s Mobilize 08 event, the Skypephone has met with phenomenal acceptance in the nine countries serviced by 3. Yet several hardware partners have drifted away to the point where we only see limited visibility for Philips, GE and IPevo dual mode (Skype and landline) phones and a few accessory products, such as the FreeTalk Wireless Stereo Headset, from InStoreSolutions (who largely address the European market). Beyond the Skype Store availability, WalMart is carrying Skype hardware in the U.S. (and I found some at Fry’s in Sunnyvale this past Saturday).

Frankly, sorting out its platform strategy and partner relationships, and giving them appropriate visibility, is perhaps one of the biggest challenges that Josh and his team face in sustaining Skype’s presence in the IP-based conversation space. In our interview with Josh it became quite apparent that these issues have not missed Josh’s scrutiny leading up to the business reorganization we have been discussing in the various posts in this series:

SJ: In your interview with Om Malik yesterday you mentioned as one of your key growth initiatives “Skype as a platform, embedding Skype as the conversation infrastructure for devices and services”. Tell use more:

JS: We’re incredibly lucky that almost everyone in the world wants to do something with us. That’s fortunate because we need to be everywhere. For Skype to be successful and to fulfill its full potential we need to be part of every device and every communications experience. and we can’t do that on our own .so we need a really robust platform that allows us to be part of other people’s experiences or devices and allow other people to be part of us. We all recognize that we have a long way to get from where we are today to there. With the relatively small program we have and small investment we have made we have 15,000 partners who have signed up for our program today. I think that’s a great indication that if we really invest behind this we can do something magical.

SJ: What would that future platform look like?

JS: What we want to do is lay out a set of principles around the platform that say:

• we want people to be able to incorporate Skype into their experience.
• It should be the full Skype stack of functionality
• it should include all of our feature set and not just hive off one piece or two pieces.
• When you use Skype you should know you’re using Skype and
• you should have a SkypeID which works across all of our experiences,

So somebody who wants to take Skype and build it into their experience but create a walled garden of “only within their experience” doesn’t build value for the greater ecosystem. If you start with Skype on one experience and then you go to another experience with another platform partner, you still need to be able to communicate. There needs to be one SkypeID that works everywhere and then it needs to hold true to some basic sense of brand principles around what the Skype brand should be. Beyond those principles we really want to allow people to innovate and use Skype and do what they will to extend the functionality for our users.

SJ: Has the architecture for this started?

JS: Right now we have created the job of GM of Platform; I hope to very soon name a GM of Platform. That person is going to have to really work on what does the architecture need to look like to support this, what are the API’s are going to be – reference UI’s, technical documentation – as well as evangelizing to the broader community forming some of our partnerships, so we have some work to do.

SJ: Is the job posted on your job board?

JS: Not yet, we have some candidates; but if there are folks in your community that are excited by this and we haven’t already filled this in the coming days [faded away but implication was to apply].

SJ: Is there a timeline?

JS: I don’t want to speculate too much. We do have a API [set] today, we do have lots of people working with the API’s so we have something to build from. I’m not an expert. I wouldn’t be able to lay out a timeline but we are going to get an expert who can lay out a timeline. … As with everything at Skype, we want to be fast but also make sure we do it well, in particular with a platform. It’s got to be well thought through so we support our partners really well. We know there’s a big responsibility in there and we take it seriously.

SJ: Would you be looking at getting the partners involved in helping designing that platform and getting some feedback on it?

JS:I think that would be essential. One of the things I’m pretty passionate about is always bringing the voice of the customer in early to anything we’re trying to do and I think that, for the platform, that would be absolutely essential.

SJ: What are you looking at to address ongoing partner communications issues with respect to the partner program?

JS: I take the partner program really seriously and we’re aware that we’ve not invested adequately behind it and want to do more. The first thing we are going to do is hire an experienced, capable leader of that organization who will pull together for me a plan for what resources do we need to invest in — engineering, partner support, evangelism, technical documentation — to make sure we build an organization that can support our partners robustly.

What I don’t want to do is over promise. Step one is, when you get somebody good in, lay out a plan and then when we’re ready to announce some more forward looking things we’ll do that.

Changes are not going to happen overnight when Skype is acquiring 300,000 new registrations per day and profitable. But, based on the strategy and principles outlined by Josh in this interview, going forward we should be looking to see within a three to six month timeframe:

• Announcements of the appointment of two key senior executives who bring along experience in building platforms and partnerships
• A platform architecture and developer roadmap
• Revamped plans for Skype’s hardware and software partner programs

It will also be most interesting to see what forums or other means Skype provides for input into the platform architecture and developer roadmap strategy. Execution is everything, especially at this stage of Skype’s growth within the IP-based conversation space.

(For background on Skype’s partner program history check out: A Primer for Skype’s Direction – Skype’s Extras Gallery and Developer Partner Program. And for an example of what attracts developers to Skype as an ecosystem check out “On Spotlight: Don Kennedy AKA TheUberOverLord”.)

Next: Markets: Business and Geographical

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

OnState has been the pioneer in providing full service call center solutions that not only employ Skype’s various conversation modes but also use Zimbra to offer a complete multi-modal Unified Communications suite that incorporates conversation recording and archiving, email management and call back capabilities. Call center agents can be contacted via live chat, free inbound Skype calls, toll-free inbound lines as well as traditional PSTN lines and email.

As an initial target market, they have built a full service solution for technical support operations such as that operated by B4 Consulting, a SAP Channel Partner. B4 Consulting needs to provide 24/7 support as they are involved in SAP Business One installations across enterprises with worldwide operations. As a result they have implemented OnState’s Call Center for Skype to deliver real-time customer support. From the press release:

The OnState CallCenter for Skype™ is integral to B4 Consulting’s delivery of its global Application Management Services for the SAP Business One application, SAP’s affordable business management solution for growing businesses. B4 Consulting’s Web-integrated call center capitalizes on the full range of OnState’s multiple communications modes and customer contact options. This includes concurrent Skype chat and voice,Skype voicemail, dynamic call recording, and callbacks. Customers can initiate contact with agents via live chat, free inbound Skype calls, toll-free inbound lines, as well as non-Skype traditional landline and email. Additionally, the OnState CallCenter is integrated with B4 Consulting’s customer relationship management system.

It is interesting to note B4′s observation that “most customer conversations begin with voice and evolve to other communication modes, principally chat.” And once communications with their customers have commenced, live chat is the favored communications mode. All customer contact, conversations, email, and chat exchanges are easily recorded in B4 Consulting’s CRM system for historical reference.

Two quotes from the press release help to put this into perspective:

“To deliver technical support services on a global basis, B4 is leveraging nearly every feature within OnState’s portfolio of customer contact solutions,” said Pat Kelly, president and CEO of OnState. “And, they are using them in a completely integrated manner and sometimes simultaneously to deliver highly-responsive support services to their customers using SAP Business One.” Moreover, as call center and support portal functions are Skype-based and Web-enabled, support can be delivered from anywhere at anytime. Therefore, B4 Consulting’s support customers can rely on call center agents who are subject-matter experts in SAP Business One.

“When we launched our Application Management Services [AMS] for SAP Business One, we couldn’t afford the time and resources to establish a traditional call center – yet we wanted to provide premium, enterprise-level services on a global basis,” noted Frank Paetzold, vice president of delivery and AMS at B4 Consulting. “Establishing a sophisticated call center was quick, easy and affordable with OnState. The beauty of OnState, however, goes beyond affordability. Implementing OnState requires no server hardware or software and minimal agent-based client software installation. OnState eliminates barriers to communication, enabling us to give customers the freedom to decide how and when they want to communicate with us as well as the option for self-service through our online knowledge portal.”

OnState’s three executive team members each bring over 20 years’ experience with call center requirements. It is a prime example where, while Skype can provide the real-time conversation infrastructure, unique experience, knowledge and resources are required to deliver a full call center solution with both the connectivity infrastructure and back office functionality required to deliver a fully operational solution.

Tags: OnState, OnState Call Center, Unified Communications, Skype, B4 Consulting, SAP Business One, Pat Kelly, Frank Petzold, SAP, SAP Channel Partner

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VoIP News has come out with a post discussing what author Jim Higdon deems are “The 5 Best Skype Extras”. Jim presents a most interesting perspective on the dyslexic nature of Skype with its superb technology and turbulent business performance in his statement:

With an unsteady performance since its purchase by eBay Inc., its founder’s costly departure, the emergence of Skype spam, significant competition, outages and poor customer service, many have speculated that Skype could be the next item for auction at eBay. Yet, despite all the bad news and crabby blog posts, more than 100 million people worldwide are registered Skype users, and 60,000 new users sign up every day.

A few comments:

• In my work I am finding that “collaboration” is a catch-all for any service providing an opportunity for a “group”, whether two parties or several hundred, and whether unilaterally or interactively, to concurrently communicate together, Yugma Skype Edition and Lotus Sametime Unyte are desktop sharing applications providing support for conversations, whether voice, text and/or video, while Convenos and Webex historically have provided fully-featured virtual office and virtual conferencing capabilities with voice as an embedded element of the overall collaborative experience.. Different tools for different target markets here
• With so many of my network of contacts acquiring Macs these days, I do find that, with Yugma’s cross-platform capability which Jim highlights, I am using it as my de facto desktop sharing application in presentations and discussions.
• Having had a chance to see both the Sony PlayStationPortable and Sony mylo COM-2 at CES, I have to say the latter offers the more intriguing embedding of Skype. Whereas the PSP only offers voice, the second generation mylo offers both voice and IM along with use of Skype file transfer to send pictures and other files. In fact, I have seen one review where the new mylo should be considered as good competition for the iPod Touch.
• Hat tip to Andy for pointing out Jim’s post. Note Andy’s comments:

What I’m seeing with the add-ins is how Skype has really become a pipe within a pipe, something I felt was coming around the time of eBay’s acquisition. With each add-in it becomes easier and easier for two way communications users to build their world around Skype for many interactive, one on one activities, like web conferencing and desktop sharing. This Top 5 list bears that out once again.

Other Skype Journal posts on Jim’s Top 5:

• Skylook: A Skype Extras Success Story
• A Most Interesting Skype Mashup: OnState Expands Into Unified Messaging
• OnState CEO Provides More Background
• Brandon Holland and His Affinity for the Echo123 Girl (Skype on AppleTV)

Tags: Skype, Skype Extras, VoIP News, Jim Higdon, VoIP Watch, Sony PlayStationPortable, Sony mylo, Andy Abramson, Skylook, AppleTV, OnState Communications, OnState Unified Messaging

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Skype’s Halina Mugame, editor of the Skype Developer Program newsletter and weblog, yesterday interviewed OnState CEO Pat Kelly and started her interview, “Less Mess with Unified Messaging“, by referencing Skype Journal’s recent post announcing OnState’s Unified Messaging offering. Questions included:

• Tell us more about this new product. In comparison with current OnState Call Center solution, what new features will be made available via mash-up with Zimbra?
• What makes Zimbra a good solution to integrate with OnState?

But the best line is the last:

Oh, and the important bit, they do all this at an industry-redefining price point.

Read Halina’s full post for more background on how OnState’s Unified Messaigng offering evolved out of their Call Center service.

Tags: Skype, OnState, OnState Unified Messaging, Halina Mugame, Pat Kelly

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