Using Skype For Your Business? Think Again.

Posted by Benny on Oct 28th, 2009 | no comments

When Skype was created back in 2003, it opened up a whole new world to telephony.  Sure there had been earlier attempts to use the internet to move voice, but Skype was a step forward with it’s clearer voice quality, ability to have features such as voicemail, calls to any phone, video conferencing and of course, all provided free if it was all on the internet.  Sure it drops the occasional  call, but what could you complain about?

Skype has huge potential to reduce a company’s long distance charges and VoIP and IP video vendors have taken note.  Companies such as Cisco, Shortel, PIP Foundry (Nortel subsidary) and LifeSize are some of those vendors have looked to integrate Skype into their hardware offerings.

Skype was sold to eBay in 2005, it’s purpose for eBay never materialized and while it was purchased for $2.6 billion, it has been written down to $1.7 billion and is looked to be spun off as a separate company in 2010.

However, the future of Skype is now uncertain.  Why, it seems that the founders of Skype want to buy it back from eBay AND have filed lawsuits claiming essential code which is a core piece of peer-to-peer communications was not included in the deal (eBay lawyers should be in hot water for this one).  While they have been licensing the code from the original founder’s new company Joltid, they decided to revoke the license from Skype.  Unless they’re able to find an alternative, shortly, the future of where this will head is far from guaranteed.

If your company happens to be utilizing Skype or worse, relying on it.  Make sure you have alternative technologies available for you to use.  It will definitely be worth planning for any contingency events.

ref: here and here

Leave a Reply

Click here to cancel reply.

Name (required)

Mail (will not be published) (required)

Website