In a recent post, I provided some examples where Skype is being used by small businesses to build relationships with a worldwide supplier and customer base. In the same post I provided a couple of examples where current economic conditions are helping to stealth Skype into enterprises in the medium to large business category. Skype itself claims that about 30% of its use is by businesses. At a blogging for business workshop a week ago and a local WordCamp this past weekend I again encountered several entrepreneurs for whom Skype was a key tool for conversations.

It seems that Skype wants to build up a repository of case studies involving business use of Skype. Last week Skype asked businesses to share their experiences with Skype as a business tool.

We’re looking for businesses like yours to share their experiences with us at Skype. We’re looking for creativity and originality – companies which use Skype in innovative ways around the world to save time, save money or stay ahead, and preferably a combination of the three.

The contest will be judged with three prizes to be  awarded involving Skype credits using Skype’s Business Control Panel along with Skype certified hardware products. More details are available at Peter Parkes post announcing the competition.

While the application form encourages the use of photos and video to support entries, it would also be useful to learn about how Skype not only reduces costs but also how Skype’s services impact business processes, customer/supplier relationships and team building across a geographically disbursed operation. And it’s not simply about voice conversations but are you using Skype chat for virtual water cooler conversations and Skype video to enhance conversations? Or do your activities involve one or more of Skype’s partner’s products for conferencing sessions, call center operations or document management?

Do you have a story to share?

Related articles by Zemanta

• Multiple Business Control Panels Per Company: A Thing I Really Want from Skype for Business (skypejournal.com)

Skype’s superwideband audio SILK codec is finally available for beta testing on Skype 2.8 for Mac Beta 2 released yesterday. I did a test call with Dan York yesterday where I was on a Windows PC with Skype for Windows 4.0 which supports SILK while Dan was using the new Skype for Mac 2.8 beta version. His subsequent Tweet, shown above on the right, says it all. I still cringe politely when not on a call with SILK support.

Otherwise the beta fixes a long list of bugs; the release notes document (Adobe Acrobat Reader required) outlines Known Issues as well as Fixed Issues. Two other changes:

• The My Account window is now embedded in the client itself (comes up for editing when you first install and log into the client)
• There is now a spectator window for screen sharing. Basically there is now an option to select a resizable portion of your Mac desktop to share as opposed to the entire desktop. (It still does not allow to you to select a specific window to share as is common with more fully featured web conferencing sharing¹.)

Desktop sharing (selection mode) as viewed on a Windows PC using Skype for Windows 4.0  sharing a selected portion of a MacBook desktop using Skype for Mac 2.8 beta 2. Note the SILK audio codec mentioned in the Technical Call Info.

Anxiously waiting to see Desktop Sharing as an additional communications mode in Skype for Windows… (along with full support for Skype Public Chat restored…)

Download Skype for Mac 2.8 beta 2 here. Full set of Release Notes.

¹ Recall that Skype’s desktop sharing is simply another conversation mode which can be activated across basic two party calls through the “Skype video” channel. It is not a full web conferencing service at all. Its one unique feature is the ability to handle share up to 640 x 480 video streams at 30 fps.

A year ago August IBM‘s Lotus Sametime Division announced the acquisition of Skype Partner Webdialogs to obtain their widely respected Unyte Desktop Sharing collaboration technology. About four months later we learned, from Lou Guercia, Lotus SameTime’s Director of Operations and Strategy, more about Unyte’s integration into the Lotus SameTime offerings. In that post on Lou’s presentation I asked:

Question: with IBM pursuing excellence on a service that comprises voice, video, chat and file transfer in a secure, encrypted environment, and with the stated goals of “working with their partners”, would this not result in a situation where IBM would be licensing Skype technology to provide a comprehensive real time multi-media communications infrastructure?

With announcements this week, including some at IBM’s annual Lotusphere 2009 event in Orlando, FL, it seems like that question is starting to get some answers..

Yesterday IBM announced “A Strong Fourth Quarter, a rarity these days“. ZDNet’s Dennis Howlett, in Can IBM sustain its momentum, goes on the provide some background, pointing out that most of IBM’s growth is occuring in its software division. Certainly IBM sees its Lotus Sametime division as a key to sustaining their momentum. Except it appears that IBM has reorganized their SameTime collaborative services into “a cloud-based porfolio of social networking and collaboration services designed for business” under a new name: LotusLive.

In a press release this past Monday, in conjunction with the annual Lotusphere event, Skype announced:

…. it will integrate Skype™ functionality with LotusLive (www.lotuslive.com), IBM’s new cloud services which are designed to help individuals build communities to work smarter, more effectively and more efficiently across and beyond their own companies. Skype’s voice and video calling will add rich, real-time communications capabilities to LotusLive, making it even easier for enterprises to collaborate in the cloud.

At Lotusphere 2009, IBM demonstrated the new Skype integration into LotusLive Engage, “an integrated suite of tools that combines your network [of contacts] with Web conferencing and collaboration capabilities like file storing and sharing, instant messaging and chart creation.”

Today we interviewed Peter Kalmstrom, Skype’s Program Manager for Toolbars, who had been attending Lotusphere to assist with the demonstrations. Peter made several points:

• This announcement covers only the first step of what will be a series of Skype integrations into the LotusLive offerings.
• The integration into LotusLive Engage is targeted at “businesses looking to collaborate inside and outside the organization to easily expand their networks…” In other words for businesses that need to include, say, sub-contractors, third party consultants, suppliers and buyers within their business operation processes.
• Within a LotusLive Engage contact profile, “Skype” fields have been added such that when a user clicks on a a name to bring up a profile card, the user can launch a Skype conversation and transfer files with a single click.
• The only additional requirement for engaging in a Skype conversation is that the initiating user must have a Skype client open.
• In addition to Skype-to-Skype calls, SkypeOut calls can also be made.
• Where several contact profile cards have been opened, a user can launch a Skype multi-party call
• Due to the nature of LotusLive Engage’s web architecture, the resulting Skype access is cross-platform; it does NOT require that the user have a Skype web (FF or IE) toolbar installed.
• A session can then also launch a Lotus Web Meeting (also known as a Lotus SameTime Unyte meeting).

Sounds like the Lotusphere demonstrations got the brainstorming going between Skype and IBM. In a concluding statement Peter said:

“We are enthusiastic about the partnership with IBM and we see a lot of areas where we can collaborate and help each other improve our services. We met with a series of executives at IBM during Lotusphere and the general feeling was highly positive.”

At the same time IBM announced Salesforce.com and LinkedIn integration into their LotusLive services. Andy at VoIP Watch comments on the competitive “collaboration and communications” space where IBM LotusLive, Microsoft Office Live and Google Apps are the key players.

With the IBM offering, we are seeing one more example of “Skype Everywhere”, in this case, being embedded into an offering that is key to IBM’s future success in delivering cloud-based outsourced business services.

Phil will have some comments on the technical aspects of this integration along with where he feels there are “deeper” integration opportunities.

Powered by Qumana

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

Related articles by Zemanta

• Stealthing Skype into Larger Businesses (voiceontheweb.biz)
• Skype for Business: Building a Case Study Repository (voiceontheweb.biz)

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.

Testimonials from Convenos customers:

“We were looking for a more affordable way to sell our product that was not only intuitive but also integrated with Salesforce.com and Skype. Convenos Meeting Center met all our requirement expectations. Our sales team launches their meetings with Convenos Meeting Center inside Saleforce.com and are now able to utilize Salesforce.com to its full capacity. Convenos Meeting Center is fun to use and is a win-win solution. I like the tool, and I like the Convenos support team.”

Bertrand de Petigny of Odotech Inc.

“Prior to adopting Convenos Meeting Center, my company was using another web presentation solution that was clumsy, restrictive and quite expensive. We switched to Convenos for its ease of use, unrestricted monthly usage and great customer support. Interactions with the team at Convenos have been timely and pleasurable. Prior to using Convenos, we were accustomed to traveling for in-person meetings. We are now saving over 50% of our normal travel expenses, allowing us to reach more customers. I would highly recommend the Convenos Meeting Center solution.”

Dan Grace, Business Development Manager, Acclaim Telecom Services

“Since adopting Convenos Meeting Center with Skype integration, my company has saved almost 75% in collaboration and conferencing fees. Convenos has allowed us to streamline our communications both internally as well as with our partners by having the ability to work on blue prints and building plans on-the-fly without having to be in the same location. We are very satisfied with the solution and recommend it.”

Brian Anson, Project Manager, McHugh Construction

My first exposure to web collaboration came with my former employer Quarterdeck, who in their mid-90′s days of developing applications for use on the Internet, had acquired a company that provided whiteboarding and application sharing. It was quite a feat in an era of 50 to 100 MHz Pentium-based PC’s and max 33 kbps dailup modems. One morning in early 1996, at 5 a.m,, while at home near Toronto, I came down to participate in a London, UK analyst conference where we demonstrated this collaboration tool between a host in London, a colleague in Paris and myself near Toronto. Since then many collaboration applications have been introduced; they have taken on many flavors, providing different levels of support for activities such as team building, weekly internal sales and support team meetings, customer and employee training and customer relationship management applications. Personally I have had exposure in my consulting work over the intervening years to a few of these tools. Ease-of-use, adaptability into an enterprise’s business’ processes, the session launch process and customer support policies have become key factors in many enterprise decisions on which tools to deploy within an individual customer’s business operations.

The experience and technology behind that Quarterdeck application eventually, after many twists and turns in the business infrastructure, evolved into one of the first web conferencing services: Webex, which grew to become an industry icon and was recently acquired by Cisco. But many others realized that they too could attempt to develop a suite of collaboration tools. One of the eventual web conferencing players, whom I had encountered as a client’s competitor several years ago, was an offering called Convoq. They had built up a reasonable customer base but their business focus recently took a turn that went away from collaboration tools.. As a result Convoq had decided to close down their web conference service at the end of January.

Last fall I reviewed a web conferencing service, Convenos Meeting Center, which effectively provides a persistent virtual board room with a “slide projector”, “full motion video display”, whiteboard, cobrowsing and application-desktop sharing. With its audio options, including Skype conferencing and HighSpeedConferencing.com incorporating HD Audio, Convenos has built an enterprise customer base around its ease-of-use, range of features (including its ability to work with salesforce.com, amongst others) and customer support activities.

Convoq at least recognized they needed to close down professionally by proactively recommending a preferred provider to whom their customers could transition smoothly and continue their collaborative activities. A month before closing down, Convoq announced they had selected Convenos as that preferred Provider; Convenos has since been working with Convoq personnel and their customer base to ensure a smooth transition prior to Convoq’s shutdown a week ago. From the press release:

“We selected Convenos based on their customer satisfaction ratings, feature set compatibility, and pricing relative to our products. Additionally they are an experienced, dedicated web conferencing provider that has earned an excellent reputation in the marketplace”, said Dermot O’Grady, CFO of Convoq.

The Convoq team needs to be congratulated for developing a transition process and putting their customers’ interests first in executing on their decision to close down. Too many businesses “just don’t show up for business” one day and leave their customers to fend for themselves. And congratulations to Convenos on their selection as the preferred web conferencing service provider; with their overall philosophy of “delighting the user”, the transition process should be a relatively smooth one.

Tags: Skype, Convenos, Convoq, web conferencing, Quarterdeck, Webex

Powered by Qumana