CounterPath has long been known for its SIP softphone clients, Xlite and Bria. Xlite is a free PC-based softphone client which provides basic voice calling and instant messaging features.

Bria is their full-feature business grade offering which:

• Provides access to an IP-based telephone system or service from a PC (Windows, Mac and Linux), iPhone or Android
• Can communicate with contacts from multiple sources, such as Microsoft Outlook, mobile phone address books and company directories
• Provides presence status (currently PC editions only)
• Supports a wide range of business standard call management features
• Incorporates support for chat sessions, including group chat (currently PC editions only)
• Has security features that allow firewall traversal

Over the past year CounterPath has released its Bria iPhone (and iPod Touch) edition with several updates (current version 1.2.1) as well as Bria Android edition. Both work over 3G or WiFi connections. A key feature is the ability to use the iPhone or Android as an extension to a PBX. From their product description:

Using the iPhone or iPod’s existing contact list, Bria iPhone Edition facilitates easy and effective communication management with an intuitive interface that accommodates multiple calls. Call functionality includes the ability to swap between two calls, merge and split calls and perform attended and unattended transfers.

Yesterday CounterPath released Bria iPad Edition which basically can turn an iPad into an IP phone for use in business telephone systems that support SIP. Effectively it can replace a desktop IP phone but also allows you to take that phone off the desk and accompany you on your travels. Your extension becomes physically available wherever you have your iPad as long as it has Internet access via 3G/LTE or WiFi. From their product description:

Bria iPad Edition facilitates easy communication with an intuitive interface that includes all of the standard phone features such as call display, call history, voicemail indicator and multiple call support. Multitasking functionality also allows Bria iPad Edition to run in the background while you use your iPad, allowing you to reference other applications while on a call.

And from the press release, which lists in detail several key features:

Unlike other VoIP voice applications marketed for the iPad that were introduced primarily for the iPhone, Bria iPad Edition is designed specifically for all Apple iPads. This iPad-centric foundation means that Bria iPad Edition leverages the device’s large, high-resolution display, providing a richer user experience that enhances the features found in the Bria iPhone Edition.

Bria iPad Edition’s separated navigation panes make it effortless to find contact information and initiate calls. A one-touch popover dialpad is elegantly minimized yet easily accessible at all times, while the iPad’s native keyboard is also available for entering alphanumeric SIP URL/addresses.

During the past year I have set up Bria on a MacBook and iPhone, using it as one of my “phones” that is hooked up to my FREETALK Connect telephone system.  Yesterday I added Bria iPad Edition to my iPad and have done some inbound and outbound test calls through the FREETALK Connect. Effectively my iPad has become one more “phone” when using the FREETALK Connect’s “Find Me” feature where calling my extension rings a Linksys IP phone, my Skype client, my BlackBerry (via an external call) and my iPad.

I made a call with Alec Saunders who also has the same configuration; both iPads were connected via WiFi to our local LAN, each of which included a FREETALK Connect. During the call I was able to record our conversation; the screen had options for transferring the call, adding a third party and either accepting or placing another call.

With all three smartphone/tablet editions, Bria interfaces to the device’s local address book and runs in background to answer calls while running other applications. During a call I also confirmed that you can also reference other applications while the call is handled in the background. As shown in the images from the call screen it also includes features such as multi-call support, call transfer and three-way calling.

My only concern is that it requires some technical knowledge to configure with the FREETALK Connect but that is a one-time exercise. While my experience involved a business telephony system, Bria iPad Editon comes preconfigured to work with several SIP service providers and it can be manually configured for any SIP-based service.

During a call with Todd Carothers, CounterPath’s Senior Vice-President Marketing and Products, , he pointed out that one of their learning experiences with these Fixed-Mobile convergence clients was how to deal with bouncing between WiFi and 3G connections in, say, a multi-level building. Basically they will incorporate into Bria a button that provides control over this situation by moving the call between 3G and mobile at the user’s discretion. Also Bria will soon be incorporating features to support SMS messaging and video calling.

Bottom line is that with Bria iPad Edition, my iPad has become a fully-featured IP phone that can be used through an business-grade telephony system for small business from any location worldwide provided there is a wireless Internet connection.

Bria iPad Edition is available at the iPad App Store at a price of $14.99.

One final comment: I have Truphone for iPad and, now, Bria for iPad. When will we see a unique Skype for iPad? If you use Google’s keyword tool, you’ll find that “Skype iPad” (and variations) is one of the more voluminous Google search requests associated with Skype. Delivering Skype for iPad will demonstrate that Skype is continuing along its path of Skype Everywhere, even after the announcement of the pending Microsoft acquisition. (It should be noted that outbound calls made to try  out Bria iPad Edition were made over a SkypeOut service via the FREETALK Connect.)

Full disclosure: The producer of the FREETALK Connect has previously been a client of the publisher’s business development services; at this point, there is no business relationship. The publisher is opening a business providing consulting to small businesses who want to implement Skype and/or IP-based communications solutions. More details to follow next week. CounterPath’s Bria is simply one of the softphone products experienced over the past year while determining configurations that work with FREETALK Connect.

Related articles

• Bria iPad Edition 1.0 a winner! (saunderslog.com)
• Apple eases rules on iPad, iPhone subscriptions (seattlepi.com)
• Bria extends VoIP phone client to iPad (tuaw.com)

When I made those initial Skype for iPhone calls last weekend, not only did I gain a quick appreciation of the voice quality but I also realized that the forthcoming multi-tasking feature of iPhone OS4 could offer new possibilities. Yes, multi-tasking would facilitate Skype’s Instant Messaging in an “always-on” mode but there could also be an even richer experience for business users.  Having attended eComm 2010 a couple of months ago, I recalled that Ringio, who introduced their offering at that event, may have that business-savvy application.

Basically think of Ringio as providing a “lite” customer relationship manager for businesses relying heavily on mobile communications. When you either call a contact or receive a call from a “known” contact, Ringio can bring up contextual information that provides background information that may assist both your conversation and team productivity. In fact, they recently demonstrated this concept with their announcement of Ringio Mobile PBX for Android. Fellow Voyces.com blogger Larry Lisser positions Ringio in All hail the Mobile PBX. Ringio calls it like it is:

To be clear, Ringio’s not expecting you to have desk phone. The focus of their innovation is to drive context into phone conversations, leveraging the information we already store about a given inbound caller (ie. when they called last, who they spoke to, what they bought last, when they were last served, and so on). Ringio is one amongst many moving quickly to bring far more context, than simply Caller ID, to a phone call.

With its aggregation of background notes, conversation outcomes, voice mail messages, online presence status and call logs, Ringio appears to bring elements of enterprise level computer-telephone integration to the small business entrepreneur. While only launched six weeks ago, according to a recent interview with Ringio CEO Sam Aparicio, they are already gaining traction with consultants as well as small business sales and tech support teams. Joining Google Market Place, with integration into Google Contacts and GMail, certainly assists in building awareness.

Sam went on to explain that Ringio can bring a unique form of team building and collaboration for a small business. When job descriptions and responsibilities can have a lot of gray areas as the business builds its revenues and customer base and any team member could be answering the phones, with Ringio any member answering a contact’s call can readily be aware of previous conversations with other team members.

While they have delivered an application for Android, Ringio needs to consider offering not only an iPhone application, potentially supporting Skype for iPhone (and iPad?), but also a BlackBerry Super App to support the largest North American business smartphone vendor today.

Here’s the other challenge for these applications – whether it’s the iPhone, BlackBerry or one of many Android offerings, holding the phone up to the ear of course makes it impossible to see this information during a voice conversation. Aside from using the speakerphone mode, would this be an ideal application for having a full headset (mic plus speakers) for the various smartphones?

Bottom line: Ringio should provide a good gage on how readily the Voice 2.0 Manifesto, with its focus on “applications as the value creators”, will be implemented into the mobile smartphone market space. Where generating awareness can be a larger challenge than delivering the appropriate technology, users in the broad small business market space need to see user interfaces and to have user experiences that encourage adoption. Calling a product a mobile PBX and actually delivering with a broadly accepted solution is the execution challenge for Ringio.

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

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

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

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

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

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

• Grandstream Achieves Skype for SIP Interoperability Certification

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

While the FREETALK Connect all encompassing PBX announced at IT Expo last Wednesday changes the economics of small business communications, it also provides a platform around which third party applications can readily be built and integrated.

Thursday saw the announcement of the FREETALK Connect Alliance, comprising thirteen charter members plus FREETALK that covers applications from conference calling to communications enhanced business processes.

Charter members include:

• AbbeyNet/Sitofono (Italy)
• Cloudvox (USA)
• FlatPlanet Phone Company (Israel)
• FREETALK (Spain)
• IfByPhone (USA)
• In Store Solutions (Hong Kong)
• Iotum/Calliflower (Canada)
• Jazinga (Canada)
• Skype (Luxembourg)
• Tatung (Taiwan)
• Thomas Howe’s Light and Electric (USA)
• Voxeo (US)
• Voxygen (UK)
• Voxbone (Belgium)

What stands out amongst all these members is their previous experience either contributing to, or developing, applications envisioned by Alec Saunders’ Voice 2.0 Manifesto more than three years ago. IVR infrastructure, conference calling, worldwide DID number provisioning, voice broadcasting and other hosted services are amongst the strengths brought into the consortium. FREETALK is continuing to recruit additional members whose bottom line is to deliver innovative applications that deliver new business opportunities to their customers.

Expect to see an entire ecosystem of products evolve around the FREETALK Connect with its inherent support of Asterisk, SIP, Skype and Skype for SIP working with the members’ existing API sets.

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

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Pardon my exuberance but I am about to write about a product that I have been beta testing for the past few months. Seven months ago I knew very little about small business PBX’s other than to know they had big $$$ signs associated with their operation.

Back in 1992 my employer of the day paid $28,000 for a PBX that would service our local Canadian office of six to ten employees – and all the extensions had to be physically in the same office. Of course we would also be paying significant long distance charges, especially for out-of-country calls. The same employer was paying about $10,000 per month for a T1 line between California and their European office in Ireland. The economics of worldwide communications has changed somewhat since then; today’s announcement from In Store Solutions of the FREETALK Connect small business PBX takes small businesses further down that path.

About six weeks ago, while visiting In Store Solutions head office in Spain, using Skype for iPhone in a WiFi zone at my hotel room, I called a SkypeID that gave me the options to press 1 for Jim, 2 for another person and 3 for another person. I pressed 1 and a few seconds later my BlackBerry was ringing me back in Spain, But the PBX was at my home near Toronto, Canada as was an attached Linksys VoIP phone that the PBX also rang simultaneously with my BlackBerry in Spain. Had I answered my BlackBerry the only charge would have been my voice roaming package $1.25 per minute. Had somebody else originated that call in the way I did, I also would have had the option to answer the call, with no resulting charges for either party, on my PC’s Skype client which at the time was also in my hotel room in Spain¹.

Bottom line: any Skype user worldwide could have reached me via this PBX on a “local” or “remote” phone, a mobile smartphone or my Skype client with minimal, if any, costs for the call. And, in practice, geography as a factor to Find Me or Follow Me was not in the equation.

Today In Store Solutions announced FREETALK Connect, a small business PBX that changes the algorithm and business model for small business voice communications. With FREETALK Connect a business can benefit from:

• accepting inbound calls made via Skype, a Skype Online number, a SIP client, Asterisk (IAX2) or the PSTN, via either an analog line or a VoIP service provider.
  • incorporating Find Me, Follow Me features
• accept calls on local analog phone lines, local or remote VoIP phones, mobile phones anywhere or remote PSTN-accessed phones – all provisioned within the PBX.
• placing outbound calls over Skype, SkypeOut, a SIP-connected VoIP service or an analog PSTN line.
• managed voice mail including consolidation of voice mail and email into one mailbox

As I experienced the different communications paths this product opened up, I realized that this box can revolutionize how small business communicates with their suppliers, customers and business partners – worldwide.

The press release lists all the services that will be on board the FREETALK Connect when it becomes available for purchase by U.S. registered Skype users in March on the Skype Store:

Some of the key features from the Jazinga platform found in the FREETALK Connect include:

• Callback / Dial-around
• Access to Skype Buddy lists
• Auto Attendant / IVR
• Paging
• Call Parking
• Remote Extensions
• Music on Hold
• Conferencing

The FREETALK Connect also has an easily configured and updated:

• Managing routes to users, telephone services, and applications
• Providing SIP/Skype telephone service management
• Router management (networking, port forwarding, DNS, DHCP)

“Jazinga’s products consistently ensure call integrity by integrating quality of service and prioritizing voice traffic on the network into an affordable, simple product,” said In Store Solutions COO Craig Smith. “There was no question that FREETALK wanted to partner with Jazinga to develop the FREETALK Connect, because it continues our goal of working with the best providers to distribute outstanding products around the world.”

“FREETALK Connect is designed for small businesses with between 2 and 49 users, an undersold market that desperately needs UC functionality,” said Randy Busch, CEO of Jazinga Inc. “As a result of our partnership with In Store Solutions, the telecom technology playing field is much more level between larger enterprises and their smaller competitors.”

In terms of the technology within FREETALK Connect it incorporates both Skype for SIP and Skype for Asterisk to provide an optimum level of Skype-based services but at the same time providing inbound calling flexibility and optimizing outbound calling expenses, all combined with the call integrity features quoted above.

FREETALK Connect will requires users to have a Skype for Business account, available through the Skype Business Control Panel, associated with each unit. More on this aspect of FREETALK Connect is the subject of a future post.

Bottom line: Targeted at small businesses with 2 to 25 employees and/or business partners with its wide range of inbound and outbound calling options, an attractive price point, incorporation of Skype for Business infrastructure and the ability to self-configure via wizards, FREETALK Connect represents a game changer in the small business communications market. Lots more will be written about this product as the applications experiences evolve.

¹In this situation I could not have the Skype client answering option since I was using my Skype account to originate the call.

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

Other posts:

Saunderslog: FREETALK Connect, the worlds first Skype-enabled Unified Communications system.

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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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Skype launches an Open Beta phase for its Skype for SIP service. Over 10,000 businesses worldwide have lined up to join the program.

Over the past eight months, Skype has been running a closed Skype for SIP beta program. A couple of PBX vendor agreements have been signed while Skype personnel have been having discussions with potential Skype for Business customers about their use of business communications processes.

Yetersday Skype has announced the launch of the Skype for SIP Open Beta program. According to Skype’s press release nearly ten thousand businesses around the world have applied to participate in this open beta phase. However, this phase is also open to any new applicants, whether PBX manufacturers, SIP gateway vendors or individual enterprises, who want to learn how they can take advantage of Skype for SIP in their business communications.

And why the interest? Skype for SIP:

• allows a business to provide inbound calling from a Skype client (whether on a PC or embedded in devices such as the RTX 3088 Dualphone), web-based click-to-call buttons or a Skype Online number through a SIP-enabled PBX or Unified Communications system.
• provisions outbound calling to landlines and mobile phones worldwide at SkypeOut rates
• has a monthly fee of $6.95/€4.95 per month per concurrent voice channel (which can handle either inbound or outbound calls)
• is managed from the Skype Business Control Panel:
  • to create and manage employees’ or outsourced resources’ Skype accounts
  • to subscribe to Skype Online numbers
  • to allocate SkypeOut credits to employees’ Skype accounts
• allows management of Skype calls via the existing PBX or UC features, such as call routing, conferencing, phone menus and voice mail
• can bring significant communication cost savings to enterprises, whether large, medium or small, especially if they are addressing continental or worldwide markets

From the Skype press release:

A company’s IT administrator just creates and registers a Skype Business Control Panel (BCP) for the organization and then follows the instructions to configure Skype for SIP to work with its existing SIP-enabled communications system. This Web-based tool allows a company to control its Skype usage from a single point and enables centralized billing, easy allocation of Skype Credit, subscriptions and online numbers to users, as well as reporting about both usage and spending. Furthermore, it gives companies the ability to manage internal employee accounts, including who uses Skype and who doesn’t and what features they can use.

As an example of the cost savings, Enterprise Business Development Manager Matthew Jordan described a company who would replace a T1 line with 23 lines at a cost of, say, $400 per month plus per minute toll charges, at up to,say, $0.03/minute, for both inbound and outbound calls. With Skype for SIP, the company would be looking at a cost of $161 per month for the 23 voice channels plus low SkypeOut rates for outbound calls to landlines and mobile phones anywhere worldwide and no charges for inbound calls.

From Skype’s perspective, a primary goal of this beta phase is to monitor usage to determine experience-based usage patterns. To facilitate this goal,  during this open beta Skype for SIP will have a 20% burstage allowances such that a company with 10 channels can actually use up to 12 channels as a means to optimize bursting levels required  based on real calling patterns. With over 10,000 Skype for SIP customers, they hope to gain statistically significant data as well as learn more about scalability and robustness issues.

The entire systems is designed to be global and scalable as numbers build. The required SIP gateways (at sip.skype.com) will be independent of SIP gateways used for legacy consumer SkypeOut calling.

Skype for SIP is a classic case of a transitional offering. Enterprises continue to use their legacy SIP-enabled PBX and then add Skype for SIP such that they can continue making calls but run them over Skype for SIP to reduce costs as they feel more and more comfortable with the advantages of the Skype for SIP exerience. It provides a low cost means of adding voice channels; it also allows a company to expand their calling into new countries at low SkypeOut rates with the only provisioning being the initial setup of Skype for SIP via the business control panel.

More information, including an introductory video, can be obtained and Business Control Panel accounts set up at the Skype for SIP beta website at sip.skype.com.

• Peter Parkes: Skype for Business Blog: Skype for SIP beta program opens up to all businesses.
• All Voice On The Web posts mentioning Skype for SIP.
• Andy Abramson talks about the “Skype Pipe”; he thinks “…. Skype just created a massive pipe into the corporate market.”

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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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This week about 50,000 people have gathered in the northern Nevada desert for the annual Burning Man ritual. You really have to visit their website to get a feel for what it is about and the principles that guide this annual one week experience.

Started in the mid-1980s, Burning Man is designed to generate a society that connects individuals to their creative powers, participation in community, civic life, and the world of nature. Gathering on an ancient lake bed, about 140 miles north of Reno, participants decide how and what they’ll contribute to the community.

But one guarantee – neither AT&T nor Verizon, neither Sprint nor T-Mobile had a cell tower within the horizon of the Black Rock City playa. As a result, working with Voxbone’s iNum service, up to 10,000 participants can receive SMS messages or, within capacity limitations, receive voice calls at country code +883, iNum’s worldwide country code accessible for free from many partner service providers and via local access numbers in 45 countries worldwide.

So, with no coverage by the commercial wireless carriers, how does this connect? Voxbone has worked with the Open BTS Project:

…. an effort to construct an open-source Unix application that uses the Universal Software Radio Peripheral (USRP) to present a GSM air interface (“Um”) to standard GSM handset and uses the Asterisk software PBX to connect calls. The combination of the ubiquitous GSM air interface with VoIP backhaul could form the basis of a new type of cellular network that could be deployed and operated at substantially lower cost than existing technologies in greenfields in the developing world.

In plain language, we are working on a new kind of cellular network that can be installed and operated at about 1/10 the cost of current technologies, but that will still be compatible with most of the handsets that are already in the market.

The OpenBTS team has constructed a cell tower at Black Rock City, that, in the “leave no trace” principle of Burning Man, will be taken down at the end of the event on Labor Day (next Monday). Effectively working together, Voxbone and the OpenBTS project have demonstrated how to set up and install at a low cost a complete GSM-based wireless service in remote and otherwise unserviced regions of the world. Full details are here but it is interesting to note:

• Who is doing this? This is an activity of the OpenBTS project. The entity legally responsible for the test is Kestrel Signal Processing, Inc.. The actual on-site engineers are David Burgess and Harvind Samra.
• Is this legal? Yes. We have an experimental license, WD9XSP, and a consent letter from Verizon authorizing us to operate in their KNKN224 block A cellular spectrum. We are also coordinating operations with Commnet Wireless to prevent interference.
• How much does the service cost me? Nothing.
• What do you do for emergency calls? Nothing. We are an experimental service and do not support emergency calls.

and

• My phone shows service but I can’t make a call. Why not? Only the first few hundred subscribers will get full speech service. Everyone else will just get SMS. There are two good reasons for this:
  1. We don’t have enough equipment for everyone to get normal speech service.
  2. Widespread speech service would change the nature of BRC in ways a lot of people would not like.

• Will my carrier charge me for every text message I send or receive on the Papa Legba network? No, the Papa Legba network is a separate isolated network from your normal carrier’s network, and no charges will apply as no SMS is being sent or received through your normal carrier.

Note that “Voxbone is providing funding and most of our VoIP connectivity”.

OpenBTS Chronicles: We Loaded the Truck Today and co-founder David Burgess reports on getting it going:

So we turned on the PA for the first time today and immediately got swamped with registration requests, which is actually normal and a good sign given our operating conditions. We also got a report of someone receiving a text message at Center Camp. That’s only about 1 km, but the impressive part is that the guy with the phone was in a
sealed shipping container (the BRC NOC) at the time. We were delayed seriously by high winds that made tower work dangerous, so a 4-hr tower job took just over 11. But it’s up thanks to the heroic efforts of the rigger. It was a little scary to watch.

From the Voxbone press release:

Voxbone worked with the OpenBTS Project to automatically assign iNums to cell phone users at Burning Man, making them instantaneously reachable from networks such as Skype and Google Talk.

“We are showcasing how iNum can be used to connect remote or unconnected areas of the globe with the rest of the connected world, using cell phone infrastructures such as OpenBTS,” said Voxbone CEO Rod Ullens.

“In addition, we are demonstrating to people attending Burning Man that they can receive voice calls and text messages from services like Google Talk on their cell phones at the festival. Burning Man is a great event at which to highlight these types of services because the attendees are open to new ideas and new experiences, and we are enthused to be a part of that.”

The iNum service is provided free to users at Burning Man. At the same time, it will enable users to spread the word about how valuable iNum is when it comes to connecting the unconnected.

“In partnerships like this one for Burning Man, there is an opportunity to demonstrate a technology for quick and cost-effective connectivity to regions that urgently need it,” said OpenBTS Project co-founder David Burgess. “In this case, the connectivity is a convenience to Burning Man participants, but iNum also can play a critical role when war, natural disasters and other emergent situations require quick communication.”

Alec Saunders, in OpenSource Meets GSM at the Burning Man, asks “Why do this?”

Naturally it’s a nice showcase for VoxBone’s iNum technology.  More to the point, OpenBTS believes that by making inexpensive mobile base stations available built around open source solutions, telephone service can be made affordable even in the remotest parts of the world.

Would be interesting to hear how it turns out in terms of number of cell phones connected and conversations handled. but the project is certainly a contributor to the overall spirit of innovation and creativity encouraged by the Burning Man ritual.

Question: while Skype for Asterisk was just released this week, can we expect the OpenBTS Project to add a Skype for Asterisk channel to their PBX next year?

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This morning Skype and Digium announced the release of Skype for Asterisk, an Asterisk platform channel driver that allows businesses using Asterisk to incorporate Skype into their calling options.

Since first announcing the Skype for Asterisk beta program last fall, over the past eleven months the beta program has gradually expanded its scope to a broader range of Asterisk developers. The result is that not only has Digium been leading the program involving over 4,000 external participants but also they have incorporated Skype for Asterisk into their own communications operations with Skype accounts such as “Digium Sales” and “Digium Support”, typical of the convention they expect many businesses to follow.

The Skype for Asterisk launch press release includes identification of a couple of Digium Partners providing implementation of Skype for Asterisk to their clients as well as some features and pricing information:

DATUS Corporation is a Digium Select Partner with nearly four decades of experience designing and implementing communications networks in Germany. The company has nearly completed an Asterisk installation at 2,100 sites for LVM Versicherungen, a major insurance firm, and also works with Digium to design features for Asterisk that are of particular interest to European businesses. “Adding Skype for Asterisk to the DATUS indali OBX, our IP-PBX, will offer our customers inexpensive and secure international calling that, for instance, could be used for toll free customer services,” said Jonny Kueppers, vice president of sales and marketing at DATUS. “We believe that the price and cost savings will be welcome with today’s budgets.”

“The combination of Skype and Asterisk gives those companies that have relied on Skype the advanced call management capabilities of Asterisk, while Asterisk users get free calling to more han 400 million registered Skype users and low Skype rates when calling landlines and mobiles,” said Stefan Öberg, vice president and general manager of Skype for Business. “We believe the product will bring together two of the largest groups of users that value flexibility and cost savings in their PBX systems.”

Foehn Ltd, Digium’s U.K. Solutions Partner, has been designing and implementing Asterisk-based solutions for more than five years. The company’s technical director, James Passingham, commented: “With Skype for Asterisk, we can offer our clients even more freedom in business communications. The ability to unlock the lower call costs of Skype provides a huge savings opportunity, especially for those with offices and customers around the globe.”

Skype for Asterisk Features

Skype for Asterisk, which is compatible with the free and open source Asterisk versions 1.4, 1.6 and AsteriskNOW™, as well as the commercially licensed Asterisk  Business Edition™, is unique in the market today. It is the only solution that integrates directly with Skype, enables multiple concurrent Skype calls from a single Skype account, and supports both G.711 and G.729a calling.

In addition, with the new software, customers can:

• Manage business Skype accounts with the Business Control Panel
• Get low Skype global rates on outbound calls (as low as 2.1US¢ per minute to more than 35 countries worldwide; connection fee and fair usage policies apply)
• Receive inbound calls to online numbers
• Route calls according to Skype profile fields, online status and privacy settings
• Streamline customer contact by allowing Web site visitors to place free Skype calls directly to their business with global click-to-call buttons

Pricing and Availability

Skype for Asterisk is available to download now for $66 USD per concurrent call from http://www.digium.com/skype or from Digium Authorized Resellers and Distributors worldwide. Skype for Asterisk comes with 90 days of installation support from the time of purchase.

More details, including documentation and a Buy button, are at Digium’s Skype for Asterisk product page. Update: Fierce VoIP, Skype for Asterisk now available, includes comments from Digium’s Pete Engler and Skype’s Matthew Jordan.

Within the next couple of weeks I will be discussing an implementation of Skype for Asterisk that I have been beta testing for the past few weeks.

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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.

Yesterday’s announcement of the Skype for SIP beta created lots of commentary in the blogosphere; it remained the leading topic on Techmeme for several hours.

• Phil Wolff over at Skype Journal, in “Skype For SIP: Big Money, Skypeless, Brand Destroyer”, outlines some of the positioning with respect to Skype for Asterisk, channel schism issues and worries that it abandons Skype’s central tenants and could undermine the brand.
• Alec Saunders, in “Skype embraces SIP; announces beta service for business users”, talks about the impact on businesses using legacy PBX’s, the increased pressure on international long distance markets and a reminder that about 1/3 of all current Skype traffic is business related.
• Jason Goecke at Ahearsion, a Skype for Asterisk beta developer, worries about the impact on the market for Skype for Asterisk in “Skype for SIP = Skype for Asterisk DOA?”

But most interesting was the Voice On The Web Public Chat session that ensued. Being on a vacation I was away from my laptop for about seven hours (yes, it was a great day to be golfing) but when I returned I found a session that not only provided the flavor of the vibrant debate going on but also many answers. The key – Chris Moore, Skype’s Senior Product Manager responsible for Skype for SIP joined into the discussion to make several points:

• Most importantly – this is Skype for SIP beta; his team is looking for feedback from a range of beta testers, not only third party developers but also the IP PBX vendors themselves. To quote Chris:
  

  Yep, whole idea is to get feedback, see what people want/don’t want to help prioritize development of new features. Our group, Skype For Business, is getting a lot of focus and its a key strategic focal point for Skype now. We’ll never get it completely right at the start, but a start is still a start

• To qualify as a beta tester you need to have some experience with configuring IP PBX’s that are currently in the market. For instance, “you must have, and be able to configure, your own SIP Enabled PBX that supports G.729 codec.”
• Beta testers will need to create a temporary Skype name to use in the beta program; the issue of a separate SkypeID and how it was handled was hotly debated.
  One point to clarify:

  Skype for SIP actually can allow multiple Skype IDs to be mapped through to a single SIP identity. However, during the beta period, we are only supporting a 1 to 1 mapping due to the fact that Skype’s advanced Business Control Panel (BCP) configuration portal is not yet available at this time. If a company wishes to configure multiple Skype ID’s mapped to a SIP identity, we can accommodate this for a subset of the beta trial participants.

• The key connections made by Skype for SIP are:
  

  - PBX –> SkypeOut (PSTN)
  - SkypeIn/Online numbers (PSTN) –> PBX
  - Skype Clients –> PBX

• The business model, including pricing, has yet to be worked out. It will require Skype to determine a means to separate out business users from “consumer” users on both Skype for SIP and Skype for Asterisk. The principle here is that business benefits from the various features of these offerings; where such significant value-add exists there is a market for the services. But any pricing for either offering is yet to be determined, keeping in mind that both offerings’ desire to make significant market penetration will be a key moderator on pricing. Again quoting Chris:
  

  no new road is easy and enhancing our focus so Skype can support business users as a distinct group differently from consumers takes some work

• Differentiation from Skype for Asterisk will be an ongoing challenge. Initially Skype for Asterisk, which will be an Asterisk channel, includes handling SIP—>Skype calls, Skype-to-Skype calls and will incorporate presence information. (My comments on an ignored aspect differentiating these are below.)
• While SFS may incorporate some “Skype trunking” capability, SFS also offers the handling of inbound calling from Skype Online numbers.
• As for the current status of SFS, Chris says the focus at the moment is on getting voice connections right as this is the feature most demanded in the market:
  

  and this is baby steps for Skype, there are many more UC services to come, voice for SIP is the biggest ask from customers. Video/presence etc only make  sense when codecs are common between skype clients and SIP endpoints.Some work left there!

• Codecs are an issue. The initially supported G.729 codec requires licensing. The Skype for Business team is working on incorporation of G.711 within a few weeks but eventually hopes to assist with the adoption of the SILK codec across the industry by supporting SILK. But this also requires SILK support at the end points. Bottom line: codecs have both a technology and business issues to be resolved.
• Security is an issue that will probably provide one of the major challenges as Skype opens up access to its cloud from both Skype for Business offerings.

My own observations, not having been around for the discussion:

• Skype for SIP and Skype for Asterisk: the discussion yesterday centered on technical issues but totally ignored the market channel issues.
• Skype for SIP requires working with the various IP PBX vendors who have their own distribution channels; Skype for Asterisk is a partnering project with Digium who has its own unique distribution channels. These channels are both looking for innovation that keeps them in business. Yes, the common issue is that SFS and SFA both threaten the long distance market, but the VAR’s and System Integrators in these channels will need new offerings that meet this challenge.
• A significant challenge for both SFA and SFS will be the User Interface. How much will either of these products make the installation,  configuration and operational aspects so user friendly that outside support requirements are minimized or eliminated. This is a huge challenge in the SMB market as many small business owners will simply not want to be involved with such issues; they have their own business specialty to focus on. The value-add of VAR’s and SI’s serving any business market comes in making business communications low cost, seamless to the business operation and five 9’s uptime for their customers.
• There is not one solution that will meet the complete world of business needs. Currently in this SMB space we have several vendors: Cisco, Microsoft Response Point, Avaya, Siemens, etc. The world would be up in arms if there were only one offering for providing the disruptive innovation for which Skype can provide support to these channels.
• The issue of addressing consumer users vs business issues recalls the PC market twenty years ago when PC hardware vendors, initially Compaq, finally figured out how to differentiate and address these markets. This was a major issue I had to deal with in setting up a PC reseller network at the time. Today we see Dell addressing these various markets as soon as you launch into their website.

The Skype-enabled world is only healthy if there are alternative offerings and channels. Recall the theme of Skype President Josh Silverman’s reminder to the analysts last week: “Skype is a software company but we plan to be everywhere”. The Skype for Business group is focusing on making the software required to support these offerings; this software will leverage the IP PBX vendors and Digium distribution channels to drive adoption through into the various regional business market channels worldwide.

Update: While Om’s post, Skype Now Means Business, Friends the SIP World, demonstrates that he has not been following very closely the strategy being laid out by Skype’s new executive team over the past few months, the comment stream it triggered  is well worth reading. For instance, check out SFA developer Tim Panton’s comment about the opportunity for innovation he has found in SFA:

That aside, I’m a huge fan of S4A and our experience to date has been positive. We leverage the improved identity management (vs PSTN or SIP) and low costs of Skype to do some very cool integration with business processes and web applications by routing Skype calls through the extensible and scriptable platform of Asterisk. [author’s bold]

Next Post: Why Skype needs to get Skype Public Chat back into the latest release of Skype for Windows 4.0. The discussion referenced above demonstrates that this is the major failing of this version.

Update: Andy Abramson at VoIP Watch: Skype and SIP Equals A Takeaway of Toll Free

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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”.

Yesterday eBay held an analyst event at its San Jose headquarters location with a keynote by eBay CEO John Donahoe followed by presentations by various eBay executives and Skype President Josh Silverman.

Josh’s presentation broke a lot of new ground for Skype addressing issues such as:

• How does Skype generate revenue?
• What drives Skype’s cost model?
• How will a software company change real time communications in ways that legacy telcos cannot?
• How is Skype structured to address its various market opportunities?

In a long-term financial outlook issued by eBay in conjunction with this event, they state:

Skype is expected to more than double its revenue to over $1.0 billion in 2011. With more than 400 million registered users currently, Skype’s metrics continue to accelerate as the company further establishes leadership in free and paid Internet-based voice and video communications, with growth opportunities in core consumer, mobile, businesses and platform. Skype’s leadership position has strengthened over the past year, driven by a new management team and the launch of many innovative products.

The overriding aspect of Josh’s presentation was repeated emphasis that, fundamentally, Skype is a software company. As verified by many of the presentations at eComm 2009 last week, Josh stated that there is a communications paradigm shift going on where hardwired networks and devices are gradually being replaced by software-based networks and flexible devices. Skype’s “opportunity is to become the world’s leading communications software company.” Josh’s analogy: It was not the railways that invented air travel; in a similar manner, software will drive the future of real time communications innovation and efficiencies going forward, not the existing telcos. To reinforce his point, Skype will not simply be on familiar telephony devices, it will show up in intelligent TV sets, car dashboards and intelligent public access terminals such as bank ATM’s all tied to a common network.

Josh continued: Communications is no longer just about voice; it’s now multi-modal: mood messages, chat, voice calling, multi-party calling, video calling (did I also hear him mention multi-party video calling?) and online screen sharing. Where and how we communicate is expanding: laptop, mobile phone, flat panel TV’s – “any connected computing device with the addition of software becomes a communication device”.

He went on: With hardware and network access becoming a commodity, the opportunity for margin is to capture it at the application layer. Software companies will drive the innovation in the industry, drive the demand for new hardware and better access. (Did he effectively read from the Voice 2.0 Manifesto?) Solutions must be device and network agnostic.

How big is the market? The $300B EBITDA of the $1.4T communication industry revenue is almost equal to the total revenue of global ecommerce and Search.

How did Skype build its business last year? Inherent reliability; it “just works”. While so much of Skype’s operating environment stands outside Skype’s control, yet Skype must try to provide the ability, through its software, to readily adapt to these conditions, especially at the user end point.

How does Skype make money?

• From user services:
  • What’s free (at no cost to Skype)? Skype-to-Skype calling, video calling, Chat/IM, Multi-Party calling, File Transfer
  • What’s Paid? Subscriptions (unlimited calling), SkypeOut (pay-as-you-go), Online Numbers, Voicemail, SMS
• From a partner perspective, licensing opportunities. The Skype-Nokia and Skype-MySpace relationships are two examples. Hardware royalties are another source. Carrier relationships, such as the 3 Skypephone example discussed below, are a third source for what are effectively licensing revenues.
• The third leg of revenue generation comprises some advertising opportunities that have arisen.

Yet Skype has inherent fundamentals that have made it profitable for the past six quarters:

• negligible customer acquisition costs (mostly word-of-mouth; compare with Vonage whose customer acquisition costs are in excess of $250)
• negligible capital expenditures and network maintenance costs (being peer-to-peer it’s Skype’s users who invest in capital items, such as PC’s, routers and Skype hardware, and in network maintenance through their Internet subscriptions)
• pre-funded accounts which result in negative working capital where subscriptions and Skype credits are paid up front but the revenue is recognized on a pro-rated quarterly basis (Have you ever noticed there’s no “phone bill” sent for payment once a month? – Skype has no collection costs)
• strong free cash flow conversion ($1.00 of EBITDA for Skype is almost $1.00 of free cash flow)

The results: Skype’s profitability has grown to the point where they achieve 20% “segment margin” an amount that Skype contributes to eBay’s overall profitability (segment margin makes no allowance for allocation of eBay corporate costs).

Additional data provided:

• Skype continues to add over 350,000 new account registrations per day
• account registrations are distributed geographically as shown on the map to the right; he labelled North America as a “developing” market with rapid growth
• A year ago Skype celebrated support of over 100B cumulative calling minutes since its launch; in 2009 Skype expects to do this same number within the year
• Over 8% of the world’s international calling minutes are on Skype
• from December 2007 to December 2008, video calls increased from 27% to 34% of calls
• due to its peer-to-peer architecture only Skype can deliver a video experience for free, and at performance levels unequalled elsewhere.
• while active users rose 39% in Q4 2008, engagement, defined as ‘calling minutes per active user’, rose by 72%
• while calls under 2 minutes duration dropped from 41% to 33% comparing October 2007 to October 2008, calls in excess of 10 minutes rose from 37% of calls to 47%. Josh attributed this to higher reliability and call quality.
• small changes make a huge difference:
  • increasing penetration of paid products by 1% brings in $60MM of additional revenue
  • to be a billion dollar business, Skype needs its existing paying users to make just one more call per day
• Skype’s marketing approach was to drive awareness through embedding Skype into the “popular culture”, where it has been used on Oprah, Who Wants to Be a Millionaire?, CNN and other news reports.

Going forward Josh talked about three markets where Skype has barely scratched the surface: core consumer (size: $240B), mobile (size: $603B), and business (size: $203B).

For the consumer market, Skype has four approaches:

• continue driving new users (by building “communities” or leveraging social networks)
• better promote its paid products (make it obvious, upon registration, where paid products can be found – not buried three levels deep in the “My Account” tab)
• increase revenue per paying user (encourage adoption of revenue services based on calling patterns; continued focus )
• monetize free users via advertising (but be smart about it, do it tastefully and carefully all the while protecting the core business)

[Author’s note: Execution on the last will be interesting, given some experience with “free” voice services that have attempted to “blatantly” introduce advertising into calls themselves.]

Josh went on to discuss mobile, but that’s the subject of a separate post. However, take a look at the Skypephone on 3 success story:

• Over 500,000 units have been sold; this generates a monthly revenue stream to Skype
• 3’s margin on Skypephone is 20% higher than their average margin across all handsets
• 79% of Skypephone customers are new 3 customers

As for Skype’s business offering:

• 35% of users use Skype primarily, or often, for business
• adoption into business often grows out of individual employees using  Skype to call friends and family when on the road, start using Skype for multi-party calls, do video calls with customers and vendors
• leads to a call to Skype from IT managers who are getting pressure from their colleagues’ experiences (and, by the way, you can charge for it)
• needs to expand from being a product to being a solution that fits with other PBX and software solutions they are already working with
• create the infrastructure required to provide service and support services (revenue opportunity)
• build out a channel that reaches out to businesses that are familiar with dealing with VAR’s

Going forward:

• Act 1: (completed) one platform (PC’s), one revenue stream (SkypeOut), one market segment (long distance calling), one primary service (voice), one primary market (mature Internet markets – Europe and Asia) and one target user (consumers)
• Act 2: (now to 2011) is about “Many” – many platforms (PC, mobile, TV, web), diversified revenue streams (subscriptions, licensing, advertising), including business subscriptions; many conversation modes (voice, video, chat, collaboration tools), many regions and many target markets
• Act3: (2012 and beyond) “Any” – any mode, any platform, anywhere, multiple market segments, established products, regional ubiquity and mature target markets.

Josh’s forecast for 2011:

• More than double revenue in excess of $1B annually
• Maintain segment margins of 18% to 20%
• More diversified revenue streams: telecom, service and licensing fees, advertising)

His summary:

• Accelerating growth, outstanding fundamentals
• Attacking an enormous opportunity and positioned to win
• Business is getting stronger

Bottom line: For the first time a CxO level Skype executive has put out an extended set of benchmarks and guidelines against which their activities can be measured by all; the challenge now lies in the execution. And analysts finally get a more detailed view into this “mysterious” and oft-questioned Skype acquisition by eBay in 2005.

The audio recording and complete sides can be found for 30 days: click here and then select “Analyst Coverage” in the left sidebar. (viewer registration and Windows Media Player or Real Audio Player required). Or go directly to this link. Josh’s portion starts at 2:37:15 into the recording.

Related articles by Zemanta

• Nokia to preload Skype onto handsets beginning in Q3 (mobilecrunch.com)
• eBay: Good in Parts (readwriteweb.com)
• Is Skype for sale? (news.cnet.com)

Following up on Thursday’s announcement of Skype for Asterisk for which details were posted on Skype Journal late Thursday, Dan York has published a more technical post, “Clarifying how Asterisk could possibly be used as a Skype-to-SIP gateway“, discussing how the Asterisk PBX treats incoming and outgoing calls, effectively independently of how the Asterisk PBX is accessed either internally or externally or is directed to make outbound calls.

However, the point I was making in my post yesterday was this announcement has the potential to turn Asterisk into a two-way “Skype-to-SIP” gateway. Asterisk – with the “Skype For Asterisk” module installed – could be deployed into a network where it could provide interconnection between Skype users and SIP users.

Dan goes on in three sections (with diagrams):

• Asterisk Interconnection Explained
• Diving a Bit Deeper
• So How *Might* This Work with ‘Skype for Asterisk”

And, in a concluding section “So What About ‘Skype-to-SIP’ states:

The point of my post yesterday was now that two-way Skype connectivity becomes just another channel driver for Asterisk, you have all sorts of interconnection possibilities. As a standalone system, you could connect SIP phones on an Asterisk server out to the Skype cloud.

If you’re into learning more technical detail of how Asterisk handles and directs inbound and outbound calling, Dan’s post is an excellent primer.

Also check out Dan’s previous post “More on how ‘Skype for Asterisk” actually works…” where he quotes an update post from Tom Keating and concludes:

If I understand this correctly, this has the potential to be huge! As far as I know, all the existing “Skype-to-PBX” solutions use the rather kludgey solution of basically running multiple instances of the Skype client on the system. Each “Skype trunk” is essentially just a separate instance of the Skype client. As Stefan Öberg indicates, there are serious scaling issues with this approach.

However, this has been the only options developers have had! Skype has not – prior to this (if it works how it sounds like it works) – provided any “back-end API” that would let a system interact directly with the Skype P2P cloud. The only API developers have had is the client API that lets them interact with a local Skype client. So that’s how all the “Skype-to-X” products have been built.

Does this mean that Skype has exposed some additional API that is available through this Skype For Asterisk product? If so, this could be VERY interesting…

Interesting times ahead.

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Phil has already pointed out the Skype for Asterisk news announced at Stefan Oberg’s AstriCon keynote this morning along with links to several blog postings and the news release. This afternoon I spent fifteen minutes talking with Stefan, Skype’s Vice-President and General Manager of Telecom, and Digium CEO Danny Windham to get more details.

First I asked who would benefit from the Skype for Asterisk announcement?

Danny and Stefan responded that the primary beneficiary would be the end user, especially small-to-medium businesses who have installed an Asterisk PBX. In particular:

• A generic SkypeID, say “acmesales”, could be setup for inbound calls to the PBX; think of this SkypeID as a “global 800 number”.
• The Asterisk PBX would then be able to hand off the call, as appropriate, to a call center, voice mail, IVR, conferencing and click-to-call from a website, amongst other Asterisk-based services and functionality.
• Each employee or agent can also access the PBX via individual SkypeID’s for taking inbound calls (including calls directed from the generic SkypeID) or placing outbound calls.
• Outbound calls can be placed to any location worldwide, either to a Skype destination or, via SkypeOut, to the PSTN in any country.
• Outbound calls can be to customers anywhere worldwide
• Also the PBX with its Skype inbound/outbound call handling can serve to provide internal company communications amongst offices worldwide. Remote employees are simply at “extensions” of the Asterisk PBX.
• As with any VoIP-based service, agents can be located in remote offices, work from home or be available in any location where they have set up a Skype-enabled PC with broadband access.
• Asterisk PBX already can be programmed to handle least cost routing of international calls; the Skype cloud will be added as an option for least cost routing.
• Calls that involve Skype at both end points will have the full HD (wideband) audio bandwidth of Skype, providing clearer, more readily understood calls than those that involve a PSTN connection at one end.

Naturally the major benefit to end users is the cost savings; Skype to Skype calls are free; calls involving SkypeOut have the normal SkypeOut charges as low as US$ 0.021 or €0.017 per minute. (On SquawkBox this morning Jim Kohlen of the VON Coalition estimated full implementation of VoIP throughout the U.S. could result in savings of up to $110B per year.)

I then probed about the extent of Asterisk installations. It turns out that there were over 1 million downloads of Asterisk via Digium last year; this year is on a run rate of over 1.5 million downloads. Danny estimates there are over 4 million active Asterisk servers worldwide that have been implemented and/or supported by Digium’s various services. Since Asterisk itself is open source, it is speculated there are many more installations out there that are not supported through Digium.

Product: Skype for Asterisk will involve a software module, developed in conjunction with Skype, that is downloaded and compiled onto an Asterisk server. Premium packages will also be available from Skype; these will be comprehensive packages tailored for various business functions and include the Skype Business Control Panel. There may be opportunities to include Skype Partner products and services, such as Pamela and/or PamFax. There will be “low” monthly licensing fees for use of the basic software module as well as the premium packages.

Distribution: Here is where this agreement is significant for Skype. Digium has an established ecosystem involving a market place, technology partners and Value Added Reseller partners (VAR’s). For the VAR’s Skype for Asterisk will be an incremental Digium reseller offering (channel driver) for which they will receive commissions for both the software licenses and premium packages described above as well as for all SkypeOut traffic brought through their customer bases. These VAR’s are responsible for implementation services as well as providing first level technical support to individual customers using Digium products and services.

The Beta program will involve two phases. Phase I will involve a limited number of participants to finalize the software while obtaining feedback from user experiences. Phase II will be a much broader public beta to provide both extended feedback as well as to train VAR’s and even end users on implementation and use of Skype for Asterisk. The beta program will require the use of version 1.4 or 1.6 of Asterisk; Skype for Asterisk will only support these versions once the commercial version is available.

As Rich Tehrani stated in his post:

What this means to Skype is that company has finally found a way to get into the enterprise in an easy way — by partnering with Digium/Asterisk which has great traction with developers, resellers, carriers, SMBs and more. Expect more enterprise use of Skype and as this happens, Skype should see more revenue from business users.

And to narrow down on Dan York’s speculation about any Skype-to-SIP gateway:

• Any existing SIP interfacing functionality within the Asterisk PBX will be available as appropriate to reach non-Skype extensions involving a SIP interface.
• The only additional Skype-to-SIP functionality will come through the existing SkypeOut gateways.

To follow on from my comments yesterday about the need for business transactions related to crossing a SIP interface, both these SIP interfaces will associate with existing business agreements.

Skype has been hinting at major announcements during the fall; this certainly has to be a significant new revenue channel for Skype while bringing new services to Asterisk end users and new sales opportunities for Asterisk resllers.

OnState Communications have been evolving their Skype-based on-demand call center offering over the past year. Launched a year ago to provide basic voice contact, they added an “open” chat capability last summer. As a result call center agents could communicate with prospective or current customers via Skype, PSTN and/or chat sessions (and could escalate chat sessions to a voice session). However, as they built their customer base, they found three new requirements:

• a need to provide customers a full service call center launch in terms of setting up Skype accounts and acquiring any Skype-related hardware such as Skype phones and/or headsets
• toll-free number call-in for customers responding to OnState’s clients’ broadcast or print media campaigns, and
• local dial-in numbers for Canadian clients who could not obtain SkypeIn numbers

Yesterday OnState launched their total solution for OnState clients that provides one-stop shopping to not only acquire the core call center services but also offer:

• Skype account setup and management
• toll-free US and international coverage in over 30 countries;
• Skype-compatible hardware (phones, headsets, etc.)
• PayPal™ easy-payment plans for all call center needs
• accessibility to advanced customer contact management solutions;
• voice, video, and business chat capabilities;
• reduced operational costs at industry redefining prices;

• Web integration including click-to-call, automatic call-back, and online chat

• streamlined customer communications; and

• improved customer management.

From their press release:

“Our new storefront actually creates a new business model – the on-demand, pay-as-you go call center,” explained Pat Kelly, CEO and cofounder of OnState Communications. “We offer one-stop shopping that spans toll-free telephone numbers, advanced call center capabilities and accessories, and Skype-compatible products,” continued Kelly. “Within minutes rather than days or weeks, businesses can launch a call center or customer contact management solution that delivers end-to-end customer service – all from a single site.”

………

The integration of Skype services and offerings with the OnState CallCenter for Skype gives businesses a single, unified source for customer service at an industry-redefining price. Unlike traditional call center solutions where businesses contract and manage any number of vendors including network, hardware, system, and software providers, OnState CallCenter customers have a single point of contact for all call center and contact management. “OnState customers eliminate the complexities and costs of dealing with multiple technology providers,” said Pat Kelly, CEO and cofounder of OnState Communications.

OnState’s evolution represents another entrepreneurial, co-operative effort between Skype and its partners to provide a disruptive offering that results in both a less expensive and more effective business process incorporating Skype infrastructure and Skype API’s. Whereas previously call centers typically required a minimum six figure investment for the required hardware, OnState’s solution provides the same or even additional functionality for $30 per agent per month with no subscription required. By providing this end-to-end one-stop offering, they simply make implementation of their solution a quicker exercise that also saves their clients associated implementation overhead costs.

Previous posts:

• Memo to Skype CEO Candidates: An Interview That Nails What Skype Can Be. OnState CEO Pat Kelly interviewed by AuctionBytes Ina Steiner.
• A Primer for Skype’s Direction – Skype’s Extras Gallery and Developer Partner Program
• Getting the Story Right: Whose Call Center for Skype Was Introduced?

Tags: OnState Communications, OnState Call Center, Skype, Skype Developer Program, Skype Extras, Pat Kelly