Since the demise of the Skype Extras program was first announced two years ago, several of the developers with third party applications worked to wean themselves off a dependence on the Skype Extras program for their survival. However, the products remained available via the fairly innocuous and plain Skype Extras page on the Skype Store.

Yesterday I learned that a new, unannounced, menu item had been slipped into the Tools menu of Skype for Windows 5.5 as shown on the right.

Click on the Get Apps… and you go to a new page on the Skype Store:

A couple of points:

• It’s called an App Directory, not an App Store. While there is a detailed description for each application , the “Get Now” Links go to an App Store or a file download; on installing the file, you will be led to the individual application developer’s “store” page.
• For instance, the link to Qik Video for Apple takes you to the iTunes preview page with a link for purchase on the Apple App Store.
• Currently listed products comprise previously available third party products or Skype utility products listed in the Apple or Android app stores.
• Applications are categorized by “genre” such as Business, Call Recording (audio and video), Call Recording  (audio only), Faxing, Desktop and Whiteboard Sharing, etc.

In a discussion with Ash Valeski, Skype’s Senior Account Manager for the Skype Store he pointed out:

• This is simple a starting point for building a third party applications distribution channel. The SkypeKit team wants to have a distribution channel that provides awareness of forthcoming applications while supporting publishers who currently have applications that use the legacy Skype API’s.
• Expect to see more features added to this page over time.
• They have reduced the available applications to those that are currently active and appropriately supported by the application publisher, including the availability of a shopping cart where payment is required.
• There is a carousel rotating through top downloads (free and paid) and top-rated offerings.
• The directory does provide an opportunity for ratings and short reviews (via Comments) for each application. (As a test I have submitted a comment on PamFax; note that, when you make a comment, you can sign in via Twitter, Facebook or other options.)

Bottom line: This App Directory is simply infrastructure for supporting the Skype developer program. The real challenge remains for the Skype Developer program to make SkypeKit an offering that can readily and widely be adopted by not only hardware developers but also software publishers. The initial feedback on the program has been provided in this post about a hardware partner whose offering will become available later this year.

In the meantime I still find these partners are using the legacy Skype API’s; for instance, Pamela just went through an upgrade based on the legacy Skype API’s. And, amongst the publishers listed in the App Directory, Pamela publisher Scendix is not alone in this regard. However, this launch is one small step that demonstrates that current management wants to get more proactive with both the Skype Store and the Skype Developer program.

Related articles

• Whither Skype Extras Today? Withered? (voiceontheweb.biz)
• Skype’s developer websites: an overview (blogs.skype.com)
• Skype Launches Third-Party App Directory (techcrunch.com)

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

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

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

The Skype Extras Survivors

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

If Skype Extras is creating an issue with software bloat through its games partner, Easybits, why do I get a blank Skype Extras window from the Tools | Get Skype Extras menu in Skype for Windows 5.3?

In one of its previous lives, ca. 2006, Skype introduced a Partner program where they encouraged third party developers to innovate products around the use of Skype. These products arrived in the form of games, productivity tools, hosted business services and utilities that enhanced the Skype experience or incorporated Skype for its real time communications features. At the time Skype provided API tools that facilitated development of these products; they remain available even as Skype ramps up its SkypeKit developer platform. Products were made readily available to Skype for Windows users through the Tools | Skype Extras menu of the Skype client. One partner had over 3 million downloads between January 2009 and August 2010; a very significant number have become ongoing subscription-paying customers.

Original Skype Extras Window

During the summer of 2007 Skype held a Mashup Competition with regional and worldwide winners. PamFax, still in its infancy but sending faxes from a PamFax window, won the worldwide competition. (Watch Voice On The Web for a complete update on PamFax’s evolution to a one-stop multi-platform “Fax for business” solution in the next few days).

Some the Extras publishers were acquired; for instance IBM’s Lotus Sametime division acquired the popular desktop sharing utility, Unyte. Others went away due to either  a lack of market acceptance, a failed business model or impatient investors. And there were many issues with the level of support provided by the Skype Developer program at that time.

Skype announced the end of the Skype Extras program in late August 2009, pointing out that no new Extras would be accepted from that point forward and that Skype Extras would not be accessible from the Skype for Windows menu after August 31, 2010. However, while this menu is still available from the Skype for Windows 5.3 client, I get the blank window shown above. However they can still be found available on the Skype website: Skype Extras page and on the Skype Store.

So what puzzles me is the recent appearance of stories about an additional program, easybits.exe, being installed with Skype for Windows. Easybits provided the platform for the Skype Extras games; it seems that a recent update to Easybits inadvertently got into some users’ recent installations of Skype for Windows. Looking through my Task Manager, there are no traces of easybits.exe; the only item related to Skype Extras Manager is skypePM.exe and it’s not consuming much RAM. Phil Wolff, over at Skype Journal, has more to say on this, including Easybits response, in #Skype Extras partner EasyBits releases game uninstall tool.

Bottom Line: So my real question is, given the blank Skype Extras screen I receive as shown above (and have received for some time now), the lack of any trace of EasyBits software on my Skype for Windows 5.3 installation and the announcement that Skype Extras would go away last fall, what is the real status of Skype Extras today? Or is it just quietly withering away?

Skype’s statement: EasyBits Update for Skype Extras Manager

P.S. – many of the former Skype Extras publishers have continued to offer their software and even built additional products that use the Skype API’s. Within a few days I’ll provide an update on where you can find these products today and their evolution into even better offerings.

Related articles

• EasyBits releases removal tool for afflicted Skype users (zdnet.com)
• Skype pushes gaming software down users throats (go.theregister.com)
• How To Uninstall EasyBits GO (EasyBitsGo.exe) Completely (ghacks.net)

Transcribing medical image (X-ray, CT scans, ultrasound) dictations by radiologists and other specialists is a critical pivot point in diagnosing patience conditions and outcomes. Just as important, for both medical and billing purposes, is the coding of the processes involved in taking an image as well as getting the resulting information into patient records. Suffice it to say that one of my previous clients was heavily involved in this area from the medical side; I’ve seen the ongoing demands in this area covering regulatory compliance, patient case management integrity and insurance claim issues.

Enter Oak Horizons, an industry leader in medical transcription training, education, and curriculum development. Simply put they have leveraged Internet communications technology to make their programs available to healthcare facilities across the U.S., not only for the new medical imaging technician or transcriptionist but also ongoing training programs for experienced professionals who need to keep abreast of new developments within their field.

They found that they needed a collaboration resource where they could readily and persistently store lessons and complementary background information, lead training sessions in virtual meeting rooms, and activate tutorial sessions on demand. Enter InnerPass whose combination of online document management, desktop sharing and Skype communications provides an appropriate communications infrastructure that meets these needs. From the press release:

“When students first start their program, be it medical transcription, coding or billing, the course content tends to be very overwhelming,” says Kathryn Martin, owner and instructor at OAK Horizons. “The real-time introduction is very important and helpful, since the course content tends to overwhelm everyone at first. We set up an InnerPass meeting room and walk our students through the first lesson in real-time, and then throughout the semester hold check-in and help sessions. I think it really helps us to set the right tone with our students; that they’ll be learning the material through directed study, but there is real-time help and instruction if they need it,” says Martin.

As OAK Horizons looks to expand its roster of partnership and client organizations, Kathryn Martin realized she needed to set the organization apart from a growing field of competitors. She adopted InnerPass and leveraged the technology to implement a system that facilitates real-time collaboration, content sharing and tutorials between teachers and students. Instructors can invite students to small-group tutorials with a live-participation component, for those students who request extra time with an instructor.

InnerPass provides easy-to-use tools, including screen-sharing and “persistent” meeting rooms, which reduce the cost of online instruction, expand access to education and training opportunities, and bring client organizations to the leading edge of educational and training technology.

Bottom line: For an activity where medical practitioners can lose up to 20% of their potential income due to faulty insurance claims, InnerPass’s aggregation of document sharing and communications allows Oak Horizons’s clients to increase not only patient case integrity but also simplify the revenue recovery process from healthcare insurance companies.

Previous InnerPass posts.

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At last month’s CES I had the opportunity to meet with Skype CEO Josh Silverman and discuss various Skype issues that have arisen over the past year as well as where Skype is headed as a privately owned company. At the time I thought this would result in a normal text-based blog post outlining some of our discussion.

However, when I arrived for the interview I realized it would also be a good occasion to try out the HD video recording feature of a relatively new Canon SD980 camera. Over the past week I have been using a new MacBook’s iMovie and found I could edit it down to a fairly succinct outcome, having eliminated much of my own nervous glitches, personal comments and humming and hawing. Most importantly, Josh makes a much better presenter of Skype’s case than I could ever hope to do in reporting on the interview. The result follows.

In this first portion we talk about

• Skype operating as an independent, private company and the role the new board members can play,
• the Canada Pension Plan Investment Board’s participation as an investor (full disclosure – about 17 million employed or formerly employed Canadians have an interest in CPPIB investments),
• what performance numbers can we expect to see going forward
• the prospects for an IPO
• what’s on the CEO’s radar as priorities for Skype
• what’s going to be available for developer partners

(My apologies to fellow Canadians for not asking about Skype Online numbers in Canada but, given there are regulatory issues involved, I’d probably get the standard “we’d love to do it but…” response. For mention of a Skype service that is being expanded into Canada, see the second portion of the interview with Skype for Mobile VP & GM Russ Shaw.)

In the second portion of the conversation we covered issues such as

• the growth of the Skype developer team
• Skype’s evolving mobile presence, including Skype for BlackBerry and video calling on mobile devices
• the launch of a formal Skype for Business program
• Skype’s video calling as a new pop culture
• Skype and the broadcast television market

Complementary to the “pop culture” discussion here, at Josh’s keynote presentation to the CES Innovation Leaders dinner, he spoke about how Skype video calling has brought to consumers the most effective realization of AT&T’s 1964 World’s Fair video calling vision where they introduced a very primitive video calling setup.

Bottom line: what can we expect to see from Skype in 2010?

• a revitalized developer program built around a more comprehensive platform from which developers can, amongst other features, embed Skype into their applications
• Skype access on many more mobile platforms as well as taking advantage of wireless carriers’ recognition of Skype as a mainstream telecommunications environment
• expansion of video calling services, including a strong role in the introduction of Internet services as a feature on a new generation of television sets;
• launch of a formal comprehensive Skype for Business program targeted at small-to-medium businesses
• many more Skype video interviews on broadcast media – for example, Skype video (and voice) calling has been used quite extensively by several networks to facilitate communications with Haiti following the earthquake

This is the third of three Skype executive interviews that took place at CES 2010; the others:

• Skype for Mobile: An Interview with Skype’s Russ Shaw
• Skype for Business: An Interview with Skype’s Matt Jordan

Other relevant posts:

• FREETALK Connect: Liberating Small Business from the Telco Oligopoly
• FREETALK’s New Webcam Product Line: Delivering 720p HD to Skype Video Calling
• Skype Video Calling on Your TV? Maybe, Maybe Not: It’s Your Call

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

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

So to clarify today’s announcement:

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

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

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

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

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Software developer and publisher PamConsult pioneered third party software development for Skype, having provided the initial German translation of Skype and then launching the first Skype Extra, Pamela in 2005. Two weeks ago PamConsult released Pamela 4.5 for which a review is forthcoming. Their PamFax offering won accolades as the 2007 Skype Partner mashup competition.

But the PamConsult team has also been busy developing software that interfaces home TV sets with Internet-based services. A recent announcement provides a window into how consumers will interact with these services simply through their TV’s remote control.

Just a little over two years ago, the Pamela team linked up with Scendix, publisher of “digital home” software for Windows Media Centre, to form PamConsult. For instance, mceAuction allows you to bring eBay onto your TV screen via Windows Media Centre; mcePhone for Skype provides easy access to Skype from your TV. More recently Scendix released Jaast for Wii, leveraging their mceAuction technology into the Nintendo Wii console. Scendix also developed an eBay Skype Tab used in German and French versions of the Skype for Windows client. While attending CeBit in Hannover two years ago I had the opportunity to experience these offerings first hand; the simplicity of their user interfaces via a TV remote control opens up new opportunities for consumer access to eBay and Skype.

Last Thursday, Philips announced a new line of LCD TV’s which will include a new feature, called Net TV, that will deliver Internet-based services and modules to the viewer’s screen via the remote control. From the Philips press release:

The Net TV feature will be available on all Philips televisions in Europe in the 8000 series, 9000 series and Cinema 21:9 from Spring 2009 onwards. Through Net TV, Internet content is tailored for the best possible viewing experience on the TV screen, and is easily accessed through the TV’s remote control, without the need for extra set top boxes or service subscriptions, or for starting up a laptop.

PamConsult, leveraging their Scendix experience and technology, yesterday announced that they will be providing the eBay channel for Net TV, designated as “eBay, Powered by Jaast”:

Internet with remote control on TV/Media Center/Wii are things we have been working on for years and thus we are proud to say that eBay and Philips have selected us to provide an eBay channel on the new sets.

Based on our mceAuction technology we have adapted the eBay content to work seamlessly on the new Philips systems.We will provide the channel via our Jaast brand.

eBay navigation on the TV is very simple, the same intuitive way of browsing eBay as with mceAuction on Microsoft Media Center and Jaast on Wii.

Given Scendix’s experience with Skype, how long will it be before their mcePhone for Skype technology could be showing up on Philips’ offerings? More importantly does this provide a path for Skype to deliver “Skype Everywhere” through TV as Skype announced at their CES 2009 press conference?

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At CES 2009 COO Scott Durchslag spoke about “liquid communications” and “Skype Wherever, Whenever”. InnerPass has developed a business-class hosted document management system; they have been marketing it via private label to over 3000 businesses or project teams on several continents.Over the past year the InnerPass team has developed a Skype Extra application that introduces real time communications, and serves as an interface, into this system.  From their website:

InnerPass helps companies control their business critical files from anywhere and anytime. Our applications are delivered thru various Software as a Service (SaaS) offerings that are entirely web-based. InnerPass primarily offers its applications to end users through a network of partners who can private label and embed the software service into their own solutions or provide as a stand alone service.

InnerPass Share and Collaborate Home Page

InnerPass starts out its communications enhanced service, called InnerPass Share and Collaborate, by building persistent document “meeting rooms” that store mission critical documents such as FDA filings, engineering and architectural drawings, legal agreements, real estate papers and other business documents which require:

• access across a geographically dispersed team of project stakeholders
• persistent storage for asynchronous 24/7/365 access
• version management

amongst other features. InnerPass has taken their document management service experience and gone a step further to support file sharing, collaboration and real time communications. They embed, within their own Skype Extra client, the ability to launch and hold real time voice and/or chat conversations, whether informal ad hoc sessions or scheduled conference calls, to discuss the underlying projects, sales meetings or other business team activity.

Using InnerPass Share and Collaborate, a user can set up a “meeting room”, store documents, launch conversations and share a designated screen for presentations or demonstrations. The room’s host can designate and invite team members from amongst his/her Skype contact list, grant permission to their team members to contribute or modify room content. From anywhere in the client, any team member has the ability to schedule and launch conference calls or group chats using the integrated Skype services.

InnerPass offers three levels of their collaboration service. A free service supports up to 3 meeting rooms with a maximum of 3 participants and 1GB of file storage (max 25MB per file). Offering perpetual file storage, the Professional Plan at $4.95/month supports 10 meeting rooms and up to 10 participants in each. The Business plan, at $12.95/month, allows up to 40 rooms and 40 people per room. Their last plan, launching in March,  is designed for the SMB (Small to Medium Size Business) will offer additional features including access to their hosted full document management service. Update (May 2009): Inner Pass also offers a “Custom” service with the potential to host a webinar with hundreds of attendees, record calls and other features.

Over the past few weeks I have experienced a few sessions using InnerPass; the InnerPass  team has been very responsive to suggestions made for improvements, especially with respect to some speed issues that are now resolved. It now works reliably with both Skype 3.8 (still Skype’s latest release for general use) and Skype 4.0 Beta 3.

Since obtaining Skype Certification and its subsequent launch last fall, InnerPass has registered over 270,000 users (as shown in the graphic) growing virally amongst Skype users with little publicity. You can download via Tools | Do More | Get Skype Extras using Skype 3.8 or Tools | Extras | Get Skype Extras under Skype 4.0 for Windows beta 3. Normally it should show up as “InnerPass Share and Collaborate” under the “Sharing” category but until a bug is resolved by the Skype Extras team, you may find it as “Share, Collaborate, Communicate”.

InnerPass CEO Steve Parsloe has written a more detailed post for Skype’s Autumn 2008 Developer Newsletter. And in early December Steve along with his colleague Bill Trail, Vice-President, Business Development discussed InnerPass as a guest on SquawkBox.

As mentioned at the beginning, InnerPass’s Share and Collaborate service is a representative example of making Skype available anywhere there is an opportunity to benefit from real time conversations. Skype has enabled InnerPass to offer real time conversations to virtual meeting rooms incorporating file and desktop (or screen) sharing. And it brings large enterprise services down to a cost level such that any individual, mobile professional or small business can afford to benefit from a collaborative document management service.

Tags: InnerPass, Skype Extras, collaboration, file sharing, Skype, Steve Parsloe

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Screen sharing is a feature, not a collaboration service. Skype has left the door open for all its developer partners to continue to build their businesses with Skype embedded into their offering, especially when it comes to fully featured collaboration services.

When you come from a technical background it’s easy to confuse features with a complete business offering. For instance, “screen sharing” or “desktop sharing” is a feature appearing in many Web 2.0 offerings. But a full collaboration offering for a business environment involves bringing together several features that bring a significant ROI to the customers.

Just to recall my own career history, working with Quarterdeck we did have some “utility” products that initially generated revenues of  up to $50MM per year. But eventually they became features within a larger business offering – in this case the operating system itself. Memory management and multi-tasking were not always easy sells but had a market at the time. Today these features are hidden within Windows. It took Microsoft about six versions of Windows to get multi-tasking and memory management right. We also had the same experience developing a web browser; Microsoft eventually incorporate web browsing into the operating system as a feature.

I have also been close to the collaboration market for many years. In fact Webex is an outgrowth of a whiteboarding service that Quarterdeck had acquired. When Quarterdeck evaporated (was sold to Symantec for remnants of software intellectual property), the team with whiteboarding experience went on to found Webex. Recently acquired by Cisco, Webex is now a major player in large enterprise collaboration activities, including desktop or screen sharing. It requires an entirely different underlying robust and scalable infrastructure to meet large and medium enterprise collaboration needs

Yesterday Skype added a screen sharing feature to Skype for Mac. We can expect it to show up in Skype for Windows in the near future. But, as I mentioned in my post about Skype for Mac, it is a feature, not a full collaboration environment. There are several Skype Partners who offer a full business collaboration environment; they are not threatened by Skype’s screen sharing feature. In fact, they may make Skype users more aware of desktop sharing and start looking for a more complete collaboration environment.

What is in a fully featured collaboration environment?

• A common feature for all is that they support real time collaboration sessions for as many as 500 participants. That’s not going to happen in any basic Skype client.
• Secondly Skype for Mac’s screen sharing involves turning the user’s desktop into a virtual webcam that goes through the Skype video channel. In other words you can do screen sharing or Skype video calling but not both concurrently. With the offerings mentioned below, the desktop sharing and other collaboration activity is via TCP/IP channels that are independent of the Skype video channel.
• Take the recently launched InnerPass Skype Extra “Share and Collaborate, Communicate“. Here is an enterprise document management company that has found a way to add Skype features that ride on top of their document management infrastructure. That infrastructure supports engineering drawings, FDA records, and business contracts amongst other document-intensive, mission critical documentation. As a result they have developed a Skype Extra that creates persistent “document rooms” which business teams may access for real time conferencing sessions. But the documents rooms can be accessed by individual team members between these team conferencing sessions. Version tracking is an important feature here. (A more detailed post on InnerPass’s offering is coming soon.)
• Yugma provides the ability to collaborate across Windows, Mac and Linux platforms. There are session moderator features to switch presenter, start and stop recording, manage participants’ role as active or passive, etc. It’s a complete collaboration environment where the voice channel could be Skype’s multi-party calling or, for more robust voice conferencing, use HiDef Conferencing.
• Lotus Sametime Unyte has been the poster child for an entrepreneurial Skype partner. Now within the IBM fold, it is being targeted to IBM’s enterprise customers within a larger role of collaboration that was pioneered by Lotus Notes.

No, Skype is not going after Webex or Yugma’s or InnerPass’s or the Lotus Sametime markets. Skype’s screen sharing is another feature that’s a peer with file sharing, video calling, IM/chat or SMS messaging. It’s a person-to-person calling complement; it’s not for highly robust, readily scalable business grade collaboration services.

Phil, I’m sorry but Skype for Mac’s screen sharing, to which I had access about a week before yesterday’s announcement, is a feature not a collaboration service. Let my repeat my statement in my initial post on Skype for Mac:

Skype for Mac’s screen sharing feature is sufficient to support discussion issues as a complement to a voice and/or chat conversation; it is NOT by any means a replacement for fully featured desktop or application sharing offerings such as Yugma, Inner Pass or IBM’s Lotus Sametime Unyte. It’s “just” screen sharing. In fact, it is one of two options on the Skype for Mac’s “Share” button, the other being file sharing/transfer.

Bottom line: There are lots of opportunities for independent developers who want to develop a complete offering that makes an independent business.

Update: Alec Saunders, who as Microsoft’s original Internet Explorer product manager, led the effort to make MSIE a feature within the operating system – and effectively killed Quarterdeck’s web browser, has his comments on this situation. Bottom line here is that Inner Pass and IBM are embedding Skype into other services they already offer.

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

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

The basic functions of a PBX include:

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Definitely a business model disrupter.

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Amidst all the macro economic turmoil of 2008, there are businesses that have stuck to their knitting and had a quite successful year. Pioneer Skype Partner PamConsult recently reported on their 2008 achievements where they have both built out their product line and provided consulting services that have resulted in a stronger development team and enhanced product offerings.

PamConsult comprises two business divisions: Scendix for software product offerings, such as their widely accepted Pamela utility for Skype (the first Skype Extra going back to 2005) and PamFax, and PamConsult for development consulting where, for instance, they developed Skype for Salesforce.com under a contract with Skype. Some highlights:

• A major accomplishment has been the ongoing growth of PamFax. During the year they built out the infrastructure to provide the robustness and scalability such that PamFax now supports over 130,000 registered users. They have announced plans for a fax-in service as well as Mac support in 2009.
• Pamela has now had over 5 million downloads; early in 2009 they expect to release version 4.5; mcePhone, their Skype integration tool for Windows Media Center, will soon see version 3.
• Finally, PamConsult continues to provide eBay offerings, including the eBay Skype tabs licensed to eBay Germany, eBay France and eBay UK. At last year’s eBay Live event, PamConsult won an eBay Star Developer award for their Jaast for Wii, which brings eBay to your TV via Nintendo’s Wii console.

It will be interesting to see how PamConsult’s Skype partnership evolves in 2009 as the new executive team introduces a comprehensive technology roadmap and revamped partnering programs.

Other posts:

• Radio Free Asia: A Skype Facilitated Broadcasting Service
• PamFax: Adding Click-to-Fax

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We have often reported on HiDef Conferencing as a leader in high quality voice conferencing. It’s a service built around servers that specialize in connecting up to 500 conferencing participants from either the PSTN or Skype, and managing the call participants’ level of participation. Should a participant be connected by Skype, they will hear all other Skype participants across their HD Audio service with all its benefits for providing better voice clarity (thus, the name HiDef Conferencing).

But HiDef Conferencing’s owner, VAPPS Inc. has not let their success depend solely on Skype activity; they have been wholesaling their conferencing service to other conferencing and collaboration service providers. As one example, I often participate in (but do not host) conference call and desktop sharing sessions involving Citrix’s GoToMeeting service and recently noticed that these calls were using the VAPPS service for provisioning the audio component of the calls.

Friday evening New York Times blogger Claire Miller reported that VAPPS venture capital partner, Azure Capital Partners, had concluded a deal to sell VAPPS to Citrix for $26.6 million plus $4.4 million in bonuses, provided founders Ben Lilienthal and Jerry Norton and their team meet certain goals. For Azure Capital Partners this provides a 3.6 times return on an 18-month investment. From Claire’s post:

Azure first looked at Vapps in 2006, but did not invest until the spring of 2007. First, they asked the company to change their business model. It used to focus on selling equipment. Instead, Azure wanted it to charge by the number of minutes people used the equipment to talk because they knew that number would grow exponentially, Mr. Weinstein said. At the time, people talked using Vapps’ technology only a few million minutes a year and now pay for half a billion minutes a year.

Acquisition is becoming the primary exit route for today’s start-ups. Build a business and service that can readily complement another service that has capital for acquisitions and you may find yourself being acquired. At least this is one service that is not going to Google or Microsoft. On the other hand Citrix has been a leader in developing virtualization and collaboration technologies along with related services for over 15 years.

Congratulations to Ben, Jerry and the entire VAPPS team on this achievement. It has been a pleasure to watch, and to report on, the evolution of their service over the past couple of years.

For Andy Abramson’s Comunicano Internet marketing agency this represents a third client acquisition over the past fifteen months; previous ones being IBM Lotus Software Group’s acquisition of Unyte and Logitech’s recent acquisition of SightSpeed.

Related posts:

• Fierce VoIP’s Doug Mohney also comments.
• HiDef Conferencing Aids Business During Credit Crunch

Full disclosure; in 2004 the author provided business development and general management services for Citrix partner Runaware, whose Test Drive service, built on a Citrix virtualization platform, powers many online software evaluation programs, including Microsoft Office.

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

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

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

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

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

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

SJ: What would that future platform look like?

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

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

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

SJ: Has the architecture for this started?

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

SJ: Is the job posted on your job board?

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

SJ: Is there a timeline?

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Next: Markets: Business and Geographical

Send faxes via PamFax for €0.14 (a 17% reduction) or, if on a PamFax Professional or PrePaid Pack plan, as low as €0.09.

Since last summer Skype Journal has been reporting on the evolution of PamFax, which allows Skype users to send faxes anywhere worldwide from your laptop in as few as five mouse clicks. Source documents can be locally scanned hard copy or electronic documents in any of 100 file formats, including Office and PDF documents. PamFax can also act as a Windows printer. This weekend last summer’s Skype Mashup Contest winner has added several new features:

• An interface for both Facebook and Salesforce.com. The Facebook interface provides your PamFax history and has a link to launch PamFax to send another fax. If you have activated a “still-in-beta” version of the Skype Toolbar for Firefox, the PamFax “Click-to-Fax” icon becomes activated. If you’re a Facebook member, you can add the Facebook interface here.

In Salesforce.com, the integration goes much further: You not only have the fax history embedded in Salesforce, but you also have the ability to start a fax from any Contact, Account, User or Lead! So no more copy&paste to send a fax to one of your contacts, as PamFax starts with name and fax number prefilled and you only have to select what you want to fax and then send the fax.

• Improved startup and performance speeds. PamConsult has invested heavily in infrastructure that accelerates the startup time (probably the major feedback complaint) and also makes the entire faxing process much more responsive. To take advantage of this feature you will need to upgrade to PamFax 1.0.0.34 client, either manually from the PamFax Home page or, after next weekend once Skype has released a new version of the Skype Extras Gallery, an automatic upgrade when you launch PamFax.
• The most significant announcement this weekend is a price reduction for Pay-As-You-Go users and Premium Packs for frequent or high volume users. Highlights:
  • Pay-As-You-Go: has been reduced from €0.17 to €0.14 (~US$0.22¹) for Zone 1 faxes with reductions to other destination zones as well.
  • PamFax Professional Plan: €2.95 (~US$4.70) per month provides a 35% discount of standard page pricing, starting at €0.09 for Zone 1.
  • Prepaid Packs: buy a pack and get a “per fax” discount. Starts at 10% for a €30 Pack to 40% for a €1000 Pack.

Having grown from 25,000 registered users back in April to over 52,000 users today, primarily in the U.S., U.K., Australia, Italy, Germany, Russia and France, PamFax is definitely filling a user need, especially for both the road warrior who needs to send a fax from any Internet connection and situations where hard copy needs to be exchanged instantly in a trackable manner. About 40% of users are paying via Skype credits while others are paying via PayPal or Amazon Payments.

Previous PamFax Posts:

• PamFax Receives Skype Certification, Grows Usage
• PamFax to the Rescue
• Mashup Champion PamFax Becomes a Full Fax Sending Solution
• PamFax: Sending Faxes via Skype

¹US$ conversions based on current rates (€1.00 = US$1.585) and are subject to currency market changes.

Tags: PamFax, PamConsult, Skype, PayPal, Amazon Payment, Fax Service, Fax

Recently I reported on plans for VAPPS to rebrand its business grade conference calling service as HiDefConferencing. Well last week it happened. And the plans have been renamed to Pay-As-You-Go, HiDef 10/25/50/100 and HiDef Ultra for 500 participant calls. Each plan has Unlimited minutes for those accessing the call via Skype. A new plan, High Def Toll Free can support a call of up to 500 participants @$0.07 per minute per user but with no Skype access.

So why would you use HiDef/10 when you can have ten participant conference calls within Skype. It’s about who is hosting the conference. With Skype Conference Calling, the host’s PC is hosting the call and subject to interference arising from a range of issues from connection speed and quality to PC configuration (especially processor and RAM) to giving way to Outlook downloads. With HiDef Conferencing, VAPPS is hosting the call on one of its servers which is solely dedicated to managing the call. For $25 per month you can ensure VAPPS’ business grade conferencing for up to ten participant calls.

A ten day free trial for a HiDef/25 account is available.

And recall that the reason for the HiDef rebranding is due to the service’s support of HD Voice (wideband audio) for all participants who access a call via Skype. Fewer misunderstood words, inflections and accents as well as a high quality listening experience.

Related post: HD Voice: Priceless

Tags: HiDef Conferencing, High Speed Conferencing, VAPPS Inc., Skype, Conference Calling

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

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

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

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

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

Website: www.on-state.com

Products and Services:

• OnState Call Center for Skype
• OnState Unified Communications

Last fall I reviewed Convenos Meeting Center, positioning it as “Your Conference Board Room on the Internet”:

Convenos Meeting Center is a complete conference sharing collaborative environment suitable for both ad hoc and scheduled meetings as well as a virtual meeting room for “persistent”, project-dedicated business activities such as key account sales strategizing or product management support.

I mentioned, however, that one shortcoming was that its Application Sharing was sluggish and found that Convenos only officially supported Internet Explorer as its platform. Last month Convenos released an upgrade that:

• has “lightning-fast” Application Sharing
• supports Firefox as a browser platform
• is Microsoft Vista tolerant (sessions have been known to run successfully on Vista platforms; they just are not sure they have found all the “gotchas”.)
• reduces installation time by about 50%
• provides enhanced Outlook support for scheduling meetings

I did some basic application sharing tests this week and can report that the Application Sharing is very fast — even transmitting some video (but not audio) from the PGA Tour site. Convenos incorporated a “mirror server” into their collaboration architecture to accomplish this.

As a default Firefox browser user, login to, and operation of, my ongoing “Test” Convenos Meeting Room worked just fine. One of the Convenos support staff, who served as another meeting participant during my trial session mentioned above, related a CMC experience where he did not realize two of the participants were on Vista until they mentioned it well into the session. On the other hand they want to do further testing before claiming full Vista compatibility.

If you are currently a Convenos user the upgrade will be offered automatically when you next log into your Convenos subscription. Should you encounter any difficulties with this route, then simply Uninstall your previous installation, reboot your PC and log back, you will have a successful upgrade. The end result performance is definitely worth taking the time to upgrade.

Convenos can be accessed either as an independent browser-based Windows application or as a Skype Extra as a complement to Skype conversations. The Convenos Meeting Center Extra, which recently received Skype certification, provides a complete “instant meeting” Convenos web conferencing mode which incorporates the upgraded Application Sharing . .

And in the same April Convenos newsletter, they remind of the “Green” benefit of collaboration in addition to the well-known cost and productivity benefits:

Did you know that aviation is the world’s fastest growing man-made source of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere and is a major contributor to global warming? Per PlanetArk, 16,000 commercial airplanes release 600 million tons of carbon dioxide every year. A recent survey conducted by a leading unified communications consultancy group revealed that 70% of organizations surveyed rated “reducing organizational carbon footprints” as a key driver in their decision to invest in web conferencing and collaboration.

In these times of rapidly rising fuel prices, one more consideration for using collaboration tools.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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Becomes an Extra Premium; implements major server upgrade.

While email and VoIP technology have changed our communications patterns, it seems that faxing still has its place as a communications mode. The growth of PamFax as a worldwide fax service using Skype’s underlying Skype Extras infrastructure is demonstrable proof.

A key advantage of PamFax is that it works from a Windows-based PC on any Internet connection worldwide and can readily send a fax to any fax terminal worldwide in about five or six simple steps. Amongst its features PamFax can serve as a Windows printer. It can accept input directly from an Office document or scanner. It’s available to use any time that you may need it; there are no upfront payments, subscriptions or registration required.

Since its launch last summer (with a major feature upgrade in late December) this winner of last summer’s Skype Mashup competition has steadily increased its usage to a point that proves that sending faxes is still a robust, widely acceptable, widely used communications tool. In January I had occasion to use it to recover tickets forgotten for an event. Dick Schiferli, CEO at PamFax publisher PamConsult, has provided some interesting numbers that demonstrate the ongoing viability of fax services:

• almost 25,000 users have installed PamFax with over 1,000 new installations per week
• average fax is 1.57 pages
• 58% of users who take advantage of the initial free page offer come back to send at least one more revenue generating fax
• paid faxes are averaging 6.5 pages
• for progress notification, 88% of all faxes use Skype chat while 25% use email (both options can be selected)

Christoph Buenger, CTO at PamConsult and lead developer of PamFax, reports recently in their blog that PamFax has received the “Skype Certified” designation. “:

Now you can be sure that this add-on for Skype does what we promise and is of high quality. The certification-team at Skype did some very intense tests of PamFax and also helped us improving the add-on.

And over the past few days, PamConsult has upgraded the PamFax infrastructure and architecture such that:

• A much larger number of formats (>100) are supported
• Independent clusters are running in both Europe and North America
• Fax processing speed and server availability are improved (the 2-page PamFax referenced in the chat session above was sent out at about 8:35 a.m.)

In a PamNews.com blog post Dick states:

We are coming up to 25.000 PamFax users now and have made some decisions how to further improve the platform. In the past 9 months we have seen some issues we don’t like and which impact performance and/or system flexibility. Users have also been providing excellent and valuable feedback.

In sending the fax referenced in the chat session above to ensure the new setup is working I noticed that PamFax needs to add a time stamp to the date information associated with the fax. This would be necessary for any use by the legal profession or anyone involved in time sensitive transactions.

Much like Skype provides real time communications worldwide agnostic to service providers, HiDef Conferencing from VAPPS provides high quality audio conferencing capabilities worldwide agnostic to service providers, PamFax is growing in its provision of fax services worldwide agnostic to service providers.

One unique aspect of Skype is its very “fluid” or simple approach to adding a another contact to a Skype call to build a conference call. Select “Add a Caller”, select the contact to be added (or enter a phone number, if on SkypeOut), click “OK” and the caller is added. I find I am having more frequent multi-party calls as a result of this simplicity of establishing conference calls for up to 10 participants.

In the past web collaboration has been associated with structured meetings, involving scheduling, emailing invitations and other activities just to set up a desktop sharing session. But a “fluid collaboration” (YouTube video) approach – that allows users to spontaneously escalate conversations from voice and text to incorporate desktop sharing, persistent file sharing and whiteboarding – provides a more intuitive ad hoc process. Yugma’s Web Collaboration for desktop sharing has an architecture that has taken this approach.

Another user consideration: The increased acceptance of both Mac (a record 2.1 million sold in the fiscal 2007 fourth quarter) and Linux (especially Ubuntu) platforms in the market a has led to rising demand for Skype Extras that run on these platforms. A good place to start is a desktop sharing application that is effectively agnostic to the operating system and runs seamlessly in cross-platform scenarios.

Yugma, who has been providing desktop sharing services for a couple of years, recently released a version 3 upgrade to its Yugma Skype Edition, Once installed on a Windows platform simply go to Tools | Do More in the Skype for Windows client and “YugmaSE Team Collaboration” will appear on the drop-down list; on the Mac, install Yugma from the Yugma website and then simply start Yugma Skype. Currently Linux participants can view a session but not host one.

Initiating a session: Once Yugma Skype has been installed via the Skype Extras menu, the ad hoc launch process involves:

• launching the host’s Yugma Skype client via Skype’s Tools | Do More menu¹
• inviting the participants available as Skype Contacts via an “Invite Participants” window which sends a Skype chat message with the URL,
• inviting participants who are not Skype contacts via email address entry from the same window; the resulting email, containing a link, should arrive within a couple of minutes of sending; and
• letting the Yugma Skype client download onto the remote participants’ PC’s and install (if this is the first Yugma Skype session on the PC)¹

Operations: The basic Yugma Skype Toolbar provides an overview of several features:

• Begin Sharing: launches the sharing of your own desktop
• The “mouse” desktop icon controls mouse and keyboard sharing with other participants in the session.
• The mannequin image icon allows you, as the host, to change the presenter who would then share his/her desktop.
• The “page” icon launches a file sharing client.
• The crossed sticks icon opens up a drawing toolbar to provide annotation
• The circle starts session recording
• The right arrow commences playback of a recording
• The double circle allows you to upload a recorded file to your PC
• The matrix image launches the session scheduling website page for those events when you require scheduled collaboration..

The Session

The session above is a shared Mac desktop being viewed on my Windows XP Professional laptop.

The host has various options as represented by the toolbar shown above with additional options in the Action drop down menu shown on the right. Usually the host would “Begin Sharing” simply to ensure the connectivity with other parties is there. At that point the host can continue sharing or change the presenter to one of the other participants. Other options in the toolbar are described above. One should note:

• Users must set up the voice conferencing independently using any of the voice services shown below.
• Participants can be invited in either an active sharing mode or a passive viewing only mode.The host would also need to add them to the voice conference call. Only “active sharing” participants are able to share their desktops – when invited by a host on a Professional account.
• Underneath the bandwidth indicator and to the right of the Session ID number is a Click-to-Copy button with three options as shown. Very handy for launching spontaneous, ad hoc sharing sessions when in a Skype conversation.
• Changing presenters, sharing desktop controls, session recording, scheduling and shared file space require one of the Professional accounts beyond a 15-day trial period.
• Yugma Skype will share either the entire desktop or one selected application. Presenters should make sure their screen is not showing any confidential information.
• The “Shared File Space” client provides a “persistent” shared file space where up to 100 MB of “sharable” files may be stored for retrieval either during a session or later. The host has access to his/her Shared File Space even if there are no other participants in a session.
• Persistent Meeting mode: you can leave a meeting open for various participants to join by keeping the same Meeting ID and communicating it to parties with whom you want to do desktop sharing in the normal course of your activities. The host can also “dismiss” participants at will.
• In the upper right corner of the client is a bandwidth indicator; it should be at least two bars strong to have a continuously reliable sharing session.

In our tests, involving two parties, we found that changes on the screen, such as text chat entries and changing the focus window, were transmitted quite rapidly; only the live video of the Skype call could not keep pace with the video movement. Remote display quality is excellent; while normally it will default to an optimum size on a remote PC there is an option to adjust the remote viewer size (File | Settings) for best viewing.

I have found the combination of Yugma Web Collaboration and Skype’s conference calling algorithm make it a very easy process to set up a small training session, to present a personalized product demonstration or to incorporate desktop sharing into a customer support call. If you are in a Skype call and have a persistent meeting implemented, along with a Skype chat session running, it’s as simple as restoring the Yugma client, Copy a URL via the click-to-copy button and Paste the resulting URL into the chat window. The other party(ies) then click on the URL to access the session.

The essentials:

• Operating Systems: Windows 2000/XP/Vista, Mac OS/X 10.3 or higher, Linux; also requires Java 1.5 or later.
  • If the user does not have Java installed – often the case for Vista installations, a Yugma-specific Java client is included in the Yugma Skype installation¹.
• Yugma Skype runs on its own (Java) client; however, there is interaction with the web browser; either IE 6 or 7 or Firefox 2.0, as well as the Safari browser on the Mac.
• Meeting Types: Instant, Scheduled, Recurring (through persistent meeting ID)
  • Invite participants via a Skype contact list and email to non-Skype participants
• Packages:
  • Free: (“Personal”) 10 participants plus host; basic desktop sharing, instant sessions only; website support only; sponsor advertisements.
  • Professional: 10, 30, 100, 500 participants: $9.95/month, $29.95/month, $69.95/month, $89.95/month respectively. Adds “change presenter”, remote participant mouse and keyboard controls, session scheduling, web session recording and playback, shared file space. Webinar features on 100, 500 participant packages. Enhanced support via email, phone and web.
  • A 15-day free Professional 10 trial is available to test the service.
• Voice services:
  • Currently voice operates independently of the Yugma Skype client; conference hosts have several options for setting up a conference call:
  • Skype’s inherent conference call feature (up to 10 participants via either Skype or SkypeOut);
  • and three low cost extended conferencing services (long distance charges may apply)
    • Yugma’s Free Teleconferencing service: call into +1-605-475-4261; long distance charges may apply.
    • HighSpeedConferencing (up to 500 participants on either Skype or landline/mobile phones) with HD Voice for Skype participants.
    • iotum’s FreeConferenceCall service (an optional Facebook application – not supported by Yugma)
  • as Yugma’s desktop sharing is almost totally independent of the voice service, you can also use other VoIP or PSTN conferencing services. However, with Skype there is ready access to Skype contacts for chat and other Skype features
• Private (as disclosed by host’s sharing the session ID through individual invitations);
• Public via a Widget button or, for Professional 100 and 500 subscribers, the Yugma Webinar feature.
• Capacity: up to 500 participants
• Web Session Recording (Professional subscription required)
• Access: via Skype Extras (Tools | Do More – Windows only), Skype Extras website (Windows and Mac) or from Yugma’s website (Windows and Mac editions).

Positioning: Yugma Skype is unique for its cross platform desktop sharing capability and providing a free basic desktop sharing service that can have as many as ten participants in a desktop sharing session. Session recording, whiteboarding and file sharing options make it a more feature rich platform. Operation of desktop sharing sessions has always been quite smooth, with rapid refreshes, and transparent to the platform itself provided there is adequate bandwidth on the Internet connection; this is where the bandwidth indicator has been a valuable aid.

Strengths:

• Cross platform desktop sharing (Windows, Mac, Linux)
• Free basic desktop sharing for host + 10 participants
• Rapid remote viewing updates from shared desktop
• Rapidly switch presenters (shared desktop)
• Choice of interactive (Sharing) or passive (Viewer) modes for remote participants
• Several voice conferencing options
• Display versatility: options to resize the remote desktop viewing window
• Web session recording
• Connection strength indicator

Weaknesses:

• Needs the ability to include voice conference information within the desktop sharing invitations
• Lacks tight integration of Skype voice channel to voice conferencing options
• Lack of Outlook integration for email invitations

Other posts in this series on collaboration tools:

• Desktop Collaboration: Ten Years Later – The Skype Impact
• Desktop Collaboration: The Skype Ecosystem Expands

¹Windows Vista users may encounter several “permission” windows during installation as explained in Alec Saunders post about “Sun’s Tactical Error on Java”. This may change with Windows Vista SP1.