Is Skype for Business Enterprise-Ready?

Now, there's an intriguing question for Skype followers. I'm one of them, and have been following them closely since the beginning. The most recent iteration of Skype for Business is targeting the enterprise market, and I think there's a good story here.

That's the focus of my latest Service Provider Views column on TMCnet, and it's running now. You can read it here, and I'd love to hear your thoughts!

Atomico Venture Fund - Implications for Carriers

Last week, Atomico's latest venture fund was launched. If you don't know them, this isn't just any venture fund - it's where Skype's founders are putting their money - along with others - into funding promising European startups.

While many of these startups are focused outside of telecom, they are all Web-based, and in time, I'm sure quite a few will find their way into the ecosystem of service providers. My thinking is that Atomico is the kind of fund that will help re-define the service provider landscape as well as the business operators are actually in.

This is the focus of my latest Service Provider Views column on TMCnet, and I hope you stop by and read the rest of the story.

Skype/Verizon News - My Take

Tuesday's news about Skype and Verizon Wireless was a pretty big deal. I wasn't at MWC to see the press conference, and other things kept me from blogging about it until now, but I wanted to share my thoughts in some form. The uber bloggers have covered all the news angles by now, so let's not go there.

The next best thing is to write about the bigger picture, and I've done that in my latest Service Provider Views column, which is running now on TMCnet. So, if this story is still of interest to you - and it should be - you can read my take here, and by all means, you're welcome to keep the conversation going.

Google Voice and the Bigger Picture

I've pretty much gone AWOL from blogging this week, as I'm fully immersed with the Smart Grid Summit, which you'll be hearing more about quite soon.

My last post was way back last Friday, where I commented on the Google Voice/Gizmo5 news. There's more to this development than meets the eye, and I think it has potential to truly disrupt the voice market even further than what's been done already.

I don't have any bandwidth to comment further today, but here's the next best thing. Fellow blogger Andy Abramson weighed in with a lengthy post today that speaks to a lot of what's been on my mind. He's been in this since Day 1, and gives a great history lesson about all the false starts in VoIP to date from the IM players and the cablecos.

Skype is a case unto itself, but otherwise, Google Voice now looks to be the next one to really get it right. Echoing Andy's post, yet again, the most important disruption is coming from outside the voice industry, and with Google's clout, this should be sending shock waves through telecom.

Andy was a thread that ran throughout my post last week, and he's done a great job here with his perspective on Google. He's got a pretty unique vantage point for this space, and I encourage you to give this post a read, let it simmer a bit and think about what it could mean to you or your business. We all use Google to varying degrees, and to pass this off as not being relevant would be a mistake.

One way or another, I'll find a way to add my two cents next week.

Google + Gizmo5 = More Disruption

Voice continues to be a really interesting space, and while I was attending Cisco's Collaboration Summit this week, a couple of notable developments took place. On the topic of disruption, Cisco is doing its best to upset the apple cart and reinvent itself as a software company. During their summit, we got a steady diet of collaboration, video, cloud services and the new world of work, but never a word about routers. Anyhow, you can review my earlier posts this week for more about that.

Back to Google. I'm going to keep things short and steer you to a nice piece that ran in Wired on Wednesday. It sums up the Google/Gizmo5 story quite well, and give appropriate kudos to uberblogger Andy Abramson, who has been on the right side of deals like this for some time. Many of his clients have had successful exits, and he's been writing about Michael Robertson and his Gizmo venture for ages. Great to see Andy get his due in a publication like this.

More importantly, Google is methodically building on their earlier GrandCentral acquisition (another Andy thread here) to create a bona fide service in Google Voice that should be cause for to concern to anyone in the voice business. In some ways, this could be the first serious challenge to Skype, especially since Gizmo5 is totally SIP-based, and can connect to all the mainstream IM platforms, including Skype - and Skype can't do that. So, this has the potential to become a truly global any-to-any service, and if the quality is there, this can be a big deal.

I say so for two simple reasons. First, between GrandCentral and Gizmo5, Google has move to the head of the line without even spending $100 million. They've been accumulating fiber for years - not likely at great expense - and through the wonders of the Internet and an endless expanse of server farms, they can now compete against any carrier in any part of the world, all of whom are struggling to compete under the weight of complex, expensive communications networks.

Not only that - my second reason - but Google doesn't need to make money with voice - at least right away. Skype needs every penny it can get from subscribers since that's their only real revenue source. Google still makes most of its money from advertising, so they can run Google Voice without much regard for making money, which is a luxury no other operator can afford. Pretty interesting set of circumstances to say the least.

Anyhow, I have three posts to steer you to that cover the ground very nicely. First is the Wired piece I referred to earlier; second is Andy's post - which ran before Wired's story, and finally, Andy's post from today, which notes that the deal is now official. I'd say everyone connected to these posts is pretty happy today.

While I have you, Google/Gizmo5 isn't the only deal going on this week of note. These things always seem to happen while I'm away. A step or two away from the world of Google Voice/Google Talk is Jajah, a company I've followed and written about for a while. Sooner or later you know they'll be a target, and you may have picked up on this from TechCrunch. I don't have anything new to add, but this item doesn't surprise me in the least. They are another disruptor like Google, and following Ribbit's acquisition last year by BT, these companies are truly validating Web 2.0 as a platform for creating, hosting and providing all forms of communications services. This is not good news for incumbents.

Finally, let's not forget Logitech, who have made their second video acquisition of note. Following last year's pickup of SightSpeed, this week they announced their deal for LifeSize, valued at $405 million. This deal pales besides Cisco's dogged attempt for Tandberg, but together, all of this activity points to some serious consolidation coming in the video space. And this brings my post full circle to Cisco. For them, video is every bit as disruptive as voice is for Google, and when players of this size make moves all at the same time, you know big things are coming. It's made for a busy week, and I'm happy to end the week posting about it.

Why Skype For Business is Good for Carriers

In my last Service Provider Views column on TMCnet, I wrote about why I think Skype has a lot to offer carriers, and explored the idea of them trying to be a channel play to develop these partnerships. That column focused mainly on the mobility market, which plays well for both consumer and business subscribers.

I've followed that up with Part 2, this time focusing on the business market opportunity for Skype. This scenario is broader and offers more opportunities, and as Skype followers know, they've made some strong moves recently to make themselves more of a solution partner than a telephony adjunct. I think they have a lot to offer service providers, and if I've done my job, hopefully you'll reach the same conclusion. Have a read for yourself, and let me know what you think!

Why Skype Could Be Good News For Carriers

Last week I posted about Skype's keynote VON, given by their CSO, Christopher Dean. It was a pretty interesting talk, and it's clear that Skype is taking some big steps forward to serve the business market - not just by themselves, but in partnership with carriers.

It's an intriguing proposition, and I mentioned I'd write further about it in my Service Provider Views column. There's a fair bit to explore, and while putting this together, I decided to make it a 2 part writeup. So, Part 1 is running now on TMCnet, and you can read it here.

If you want to follow this to completion, I'll have Part 2 ready in early October, so watch for it then.

VON - Final Day/Skype Keynote - Seeking Channel Partners

Yesterday was a transition day here, with VON running til early afternoon, and then the focus shifted to the Channel Partners event. It was a bit strange seeing all the signage, etc. for VON in the morning, then disappearing and being replaced by Channel Partners. Am sure some people came for both events, but it was hard to tell.

I moderated one of the morning sessions - it was on mobile applications for the enterprise. We had Nancy Colwell from Divitas, Thomas Monopoli from MetaSwitch, and Tom Howe from - well you know Tom, right? I thought it was a very balanced panel, and Tom did a great job filling in for Voxeo who was a last minute scratch. The biggest surprise of the session was discovering that most of the people in the audience were Engineers, so it didn't take much for the conversations to get technical, and that was a good thing. It's pretty clear that mobile apps are new to this crowd, but I think we did a good job showing them what is possible, especially with the success stories that Nancy cited.



The highlight of the day, though - and the event in my view - was the Skype keynote to close out the event - which was very well attended. Christopher Dean is Skype's CSO - Chief Strategy Officer - and the fact that someone from Skype actually has a title like this says a lot about how much the company has matured.

Most of Christopher's presentation reviewed major trends in communications and as they align, how well things line up for Skype. He did a nice job citing data points to show the rapid growth of things like smartphones, 4G, mobile VoIP, broadband adoption, UC, cloud computing, FMC, etc. Nothing new there, but he then outlined how Skype is addressing these opportunities, especially for the business market.

Most of us know this is a top priority for Skype, and the most newsworthy item from the keynote was their new focus on channels, which of course ties in nicely with both events here - VON and Channel Partners. The main idea here is that Skype will be launching a service provider VAR program later this year. Christopher provided a URL about the program for reference, but as you'll see, there's not much there yet.

So, in the course of a few minutes, the audience heard about how Skype is looking to cross the chasm and partner with service providers. That creates all kinds of interesting scenarios, and Christopher pointed out how this is part of their bigger vision to be more open and partner-friendly in the post-eBay world. On that note, he didn't have much to say about the Extras program other than they understand how important it is, and are overhauling it now. So, it's not quite dead yet....

Lots more to talk about, and I'm saving that for my next Service Provider Views article, which should be out early next week. I hope you give that a read.



Virgo's Richard Martin introducing the keynote. Kudos to Rick, btw, for pulling this event together and giving VON a second life, so to speak...





VON's over - time to wander a bit. A few shots here from Lincoln Road. Going back to Toronto today, and this was pretty much my last shot at enjoying the weather - wouldn't you have done the same?

VON - So Far

Well, I got to see a handful of sessions yesterday, and have walked the floor a few times. Otherwise, I've been living in the Press Room, and doing my share of briefings and biz dev meetings.

So far, I'd say VON is turning out pretty much as expected. Not too big and not too small. It's a different VON, that's for sure. No Hawaiian shirts (but it sure is hot and humid here), no purple minutes, no rock and roll blowout parties, etc. But, the caliber of speakers and sessions has been very good so far. I really liked what I saw, and the sessions were well attended. The Latin America Summit is running today, and tomorrow, the venue transitions from VON to the Channel Partners show. This really makes VON and a 2+ day show, and it's probably the right amount of time.

Not sure how much of the LatAm summit I'll see, but I have my own session to moderate tomorrow on mobile enterprise apps. Tom Howe is a last minute stand-in for Voxeo - am sure things will turn out just fine. I'm quite looking forward to seeing Skype's Christopher Dean close things out tomorrow. It sure has been a busy week for Skype, and I talked to the press a couple of times yesterday about the latest developments, which could potentially derail the deal altogether. Let's leave it at that and see what comes tomorrow.



Different VON, but many familiar faces - which is not a bad thing!

Skype For Business Winners Announced

I've been meaning to post this since Monday, but the Smart Grid Summit is just keeping me too busy. Anyhow, I've been a Skype follower from the beginning, and try to keep up as best I can. I don't have the dedicated focus of Skype Journal or Jim Courtney's blog, and those are the places to go for the in-depth low down on what Skype is up to.

That said, I get asked by the media a lot about Skype for business in particular. It's always been a bit of a conundrum, as you don't always think of Skype as a business application, even though it's so widely used in the office. Problem is, most people associate Skype with PC-based telephony, but of course, it's so much more.

Aside from the Summit activity, we're off on vacation tomorrow, so I don't have the luxury to time to give you any real analysis of the purpose of this post. Basically, on Monday Skype announced the winners of their global Skype For Business Competition. The results were posted on Stefan Oberg's Skype blog that day, and you can review them all there. I don't know how many entries were submitted, but it's great way to get the Skype developer community focused on real world applications that add value for business users.

It's great to see the global breadth of the winners, although it's too bad there were no Canadian winners! Anyhow, just a quick scan indicates there are business applications that go beyond basic voice calling, and hopefully Skype is takig some good steps forward to develop a suite of features that can be monetized with business users. There's lots of latent opportunity for building on everyday Skype features and extending that to collaboration, and there are some examples of that in the posting.

What really stands out for me, though, is how many winning apps have to do with language translation and learning English in foreign countries. Skype sure is a natural tool for that, and all Skype users get their share of random requests from people who just want chat to learn English - I know I do. The international community is probably the one thing Skype has over all the other IM platforms, mainly because they are largely U.S. in origin. By extension, I would think this could be the pot of gold for Skype as a business tool - either to support multinational businesses or as a platform to enable international business, regardless of language. That's my two cents for now, and if you have another take, I'd love to hear it.

All told, though, congrats to the winners, and I sure hope this is a sign of good things to come for Skype in the business world.

Ecomm Updates/Lee speaks on Skype and telecom

Phil Wolff of Skype Journal posted a thought-provoking interview with Lee Dryburgh, and this as good a time as any to report a few updates around Lee's event, eComm.

First, the interview. It starts from SJ's perspective - Skype - and what its future may hold if it breaks away from eBay. This is a good jumping-off point for Phil to engage Lee about Skype's impact on telecom and where the world goes from here. Lee has some very particular ideas about the future of telcos, and the main takeaway for me was the distinction between attention and intention. Before Skype, telephony was all about attention - getting people's attention - and in Lee's mind, telcos do a very bad job of this. In other words, the phone is not very efficient at getting people's attention when you want it - most calls end up in voice mail, on hold, getting transferred, endless IVR options, etc.

Why? Because the PSTN lacks any form of intelligence - the kind that comes with software-based communications tools like Skype or Google. That's where intention comes along. 2.0-style applications can gather intelligence about end users and make crude deductions about behaviors and preferences. We're still very early stage here, but this is what long tail economics is about, and it's pretty easy to see how even simple Presence features make communications more efficient than conventional telephony.

Lee is basically saying we're at the cusp of "phase two" of telecom's evolution, and it builds on what Skype has started. Android will be a pretty good barometer of Lee's vision, and he foresees a world where some legacy telcos will survive, but many will not. I'm not so sure about that, but there's no doubt we'll be seeing some big time disruption in the next few years, and that of course, is what eComm is all about.

How's that for a clever segue into the rest of this post? Speaking of eComm... there are a couple of timely updates that follow nicely on Lee's ideas. First, as an Advisor to eComm 2009, I've been part of some back and forth about the best URL to use for eComm. Based on what's out there, it was very recently decided to use a new URL going forward: www.ecomm.ec. Yes, I know it looks a bit odd, but eComm is a pretty unique type of conference, so why not have an unusual Internet handle? Now you know. So, update your bookmarks - here's the new address for eComm.

As you can see, the logo and event name have been updated, and you can also catch up on how the fall event is coming along. It will be in Amsterdam this Fall, and marks eComm's debut in Europe.

Finally, turning the page back the March eComm in San Jose - believe it or not, but Lee is still posting videos and presentations to the eComm blog. This is definitely worth making noise about, since there were so many good presentations. As recently as this Tuesday, Lee has added content, so if eComm 2009 fell off your radar the day after the event, spend some time on the blog. Whether you missed the event or wanted to revisit some sessions, there's lots there to explore. So, kudos to Lee for investing all this after-the-fact time to keep the content, ideas and spirit of eComm fresh.

What to do with Skype?

Big question, and lots of interesting solutions. I've been out of the news loop the past couple of days, but this eBay/Skype story was hard to miss - examples here, here, here and here. Without rehashing the mainstream headlines, it's clearly on the table now that eBay has given up trying to create synergies with Skype, so the focus now is on making the best of things as distinct entities.

The preferred route for eBay would be to keep Skype and recoup their investment via an IPO sometime next year. That would certainly bring an end to things with both parties leaving on a high note. Of course this hinges heavily on the state of capital markets, and the optimist would say that by next year we'll be so fed up with the recession, investors will happily jump into anything resembling a good news story. Skype IS a good news story, and no doubt Wall Street would play this up as the IPO that kick starts tech stocks back to life. If so, Skype could ride this wave a while by validating this space for investors and giving us all a reason to believe that tech stocks can make us wealthy again.

And what do I mean by "this space" anyway? To me, this is where things get interesting. Most people associate Skype with VoIP and PC telephony, and we all know how poorly that "space" has done for investors lately. Don't forget Vonage got first mover advantage by going public ahead of Skype, and contrary to great expectations, their IPO set VoIP back a very long way with investors. I like Skype's prospects a lot more than Vonage, so for those looking for a second chance at the VoIP space, a Skype IPO would be ideal.

However, I see Skype being much more than a VoIP play. I won't deny that's important, but to me Skype is really a Web 2.0 story. Their revenues are built almost entirely around VoIP, but there's so much more potential if/when they can monetize their community of over 400 million users - video, mobile apps, social networking, file sharing, business users, etc. Of course that's a big IF, but think about what that would mean for all those Web 2.0 companies out there with huge communities but no real business models - Myspace, Facebook, Twitter, Flickr, etc. If Skype can show the way, then I could see their IPO being much bigger, not just financially, but providing some validity to invest in all these other stories, which then makes Web 2.0 the next BIG THING.

I'm guessing that's why Niklas and Janus want to buy Skype back. It has to be a good sign when the founders want back in, and they certainly aren't hurting for cash. Joost was their follow up to Skype, and it really hasn't done much - but probably could with Skype back in the picture. Talk about interesting possibilities. Of course, there's another big twist here - Joltid - which appears to be the core technology Skype was built upon. It's a mystery to me why this didn't come with the Skype acquisition - and I'm guessing the Skype folks felt it was too important, and maybe that's turning out to be true now. So, a lot depends on how this plays out, and who will end up with lawful control. I'd have to say all bets are off until this is resolved. If Joltid ends up with eBay, Skype may not be as attractive to the founders, and vice versa should it go the other way.

And then there's the scenario of Skype being acquired by one of the usual suspects - Google, Microsoft, Yahoo. There's a storyline around all these, but for my money, I've long felt Apple would be the best fit, or possibly a Web-savvy company like Adobe. I got to share that view with the BBC yesterday, which was nice, but we'll need a longer conversation to take this further. Back to work...

Project GhostNet - Canada (and Google) Saves the World From Cyber-Spying - Again!

Wow, what a story. While most people I know are at either VoiceCon or CTIA this week, this one is worth staying home for. Also, I'm sure all the Skype followers are focused today on the news about working with the iPhone - and that IS a big story. However - for very different reasons - I'm sure you'll find this one of interest too.

This was a front page story in today's Globe and Mail, and no doubt many other Canadian dailies. I don't particularly follow cyber-crime, but this story is pretty incredible, and for the VoIP crowd there's an important Skype tangent. This will make a great thriller movie some day (maybe I should write it!) with all kinds of angles that normally don't have much to do with one another - China/Tibet, cyber-spying Toronto, Canada, Google and Skype. Are you intrigued? Read on, please.

In short, a team of academics/tech researchers based at the University of Toronto's Munk Centre for International Studies, discovered a Dr. Evil-like cyber-spying network with global implications. The threat is largely around how data that is sensitive to Tibet's security is being poached and monitored from PC's all over the world, and how many of the links point to servers located in China. I'll stop there - am sure you can imagine for yourself just how charged these issues and allegations are. Phew!

I'll leave the politics aside, but as the reports describe, it's a story that took a life of its own with one small discovery leading to many others, and finally to the news that went public today. I'm no hacker, but can appreciate how complex these things are, and how you have to think like a hacker to reveal the Rosetta Stone that gets you on the trail to the source.

Incredibly, the breakthrough that cracked the code was not an ingenious repeat of what went into Colossus (the famous Bletchley Park-developed computer that solved the code of Nazi messages - arguably saving Britain from defeat in WWII) - but a simple Google search!!! Amazing, Mr. Smart, as Harry Hoo would have said to Agent 86 in his slow, incredulous manner.

If that doesn't get you going, I don't know what else will. There's a lot to this story, and I'll steer you straight to the article from today's paper. I love citing the online edition of stories because you also get the reader comments. At last count there was well of over 500 comments, so if cyber-spying is your thing, you could be reading for a while.

This story should be of huge interest to anyone working in PC/Internet security, as it highlights just how vulnerable we can be. As smart as we think we are, the bad guys are often smarter, but in the end - and here's the scary part - nobody is smarter than Google! What does it say about cyberspace when an operation this sophisticated can ultimately be exposed by searching on Google? Sure makes you wonder what else about our personal/private lives is just a few clicks away from those don't have the best of intentions.

So many implications to consider here, but I want to just touch on a couple here - and perhaps this will lead to some interesting dialog about other things...

First, waving the flag, it's great to say that this discovery/expose came from Canada, primarily Toronto, and some from Ottawa. The article provides quite a bit of detail about them, but the key players are Nart Villeneuve, Greg Walton and Ron Deibert from the lab at U of T, and the Ottawa-based SecDev Group.

Second - here's where the Skype connection comes in. This isn't the first time China has been associated with compromised data security. Last fall, just after the Beijing Olympics, there was an unsettling discovery about how Skype traffic was being monitored in China. Ugh. I posted about it, and the story was widely covered in the media and blogosphere.

So why am I dragging Skype back into this messy place again? Well - the same team at U of T that just exposed this cyber-spy operation also discovered what was happening to Skype in China. I know what you're thinking --- if they're smart enough to do GhostNet, when you've got a cyber-spy problem, who ya gonna call?

Google Voice - VoIP is Alive and Well

I don't jump on news items all that much, but today's Google Voice story is a good one, and is a great validation for my position that VoIP is far from dead. Followers of my blog would be familiar with that topic, which I wrote about in a favorable light in December, but sparked lively debate on both sides of the dead or alive argument about the state of VoIP.

I've been trying to get this post out all day, but project work is keeping me busy, plus I've been fielding a handful of media calls about Google Voice. So what's the fuss?

You should start first with the media - Fierce VoIP and the San Fran Chronicle, then move on to the blogs, namely GigaOm and Andy Abramson. Andy has to be particularly happy since he was an early backer of GrandCentral and they were one of his many clients to have successful exits - very nice.

I was happy to be contacted about this story by the media, as I've followed GrandCentral for some time, and wrote about their being acquired back in 2007. This morning I was cited on the BBC's coverage of Google Voice, which was also picked up by Negocios. That one's in Portuguese - I've got no idea what they're saying, but I'm in there! The SF Chronicle called about this yesterday, but the timing didn't work out, so I missed that one - sorry Verne.

Finally, Wired got my take on Google Voice this afternoon, but it's not running yet. The article running there now on Google Voice is from yesterday, and the updated story should be posted any time now. I'll revise this post once it's up.

UPDATE - the Wired article referenced above has now been posted. I figured it best to leave the link for the earlier article, and now provide the link to today's Wired article that I was cited in.

As mentioned, this is good move for Google, and really helps make their Google Apps suite more sticky, and with GC's voice rec piece, it could be an important driver in bolstering their mobile search capabilities. It makes them a more interesting alternative to Skype, but I'd say it's more of a threat to Microsoft and even IBM/Lotus for business users. There's enough here to keep you busy for a while, but if you still have questions, please drop me a line!