Skype Announces Skype For Business 102
conq writes "Skype has launched a new offensive to go after small business dollars. From the BusinessWeek article: 'The company is unveiling Skype for Business, aimed at small companies with fewer than 10 employees, on Mar. 9. Skype for Business will include a new Web site, Skype.biz, as well as a host of features and hardware. While Skype has introduced features appealing to business users one by one for the past six months, the new announcement marks the beginning of a concerted effort.'"
Non Intel based businesses? (Score:4, Funny)
Re:Non Intel based businesses? (Score:2)
Re:Non Intel based businesses? (Score:1, Interesting)
No More Phones? (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:No More Phones? (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:No More Phones? (Score:2, Insightful)
"when phones are down" (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:"when phones are down" (Score:2)
Re:No More Phones? (Score:2)
Re:No More Phones? (Score:4, Insightful)
It's more than just phones that's going to prevent adoption. Sure, there's a good amount of tech savvy businesses out there who would be willing to use something like this. However, there are 100x times as many businesses who would be saving a ton on their phone services if they could spell VoIP. Small business phone service is ungodly expensive. In many cases, they're spending more on their telecom services per month than they do rent. I've been working with a subscriber with a small, six-person office, with five phone lines and who makes a decent chunk of long distance calls. Their phone bill is over $600/mo! And they dropped $4k the phone system hardware four years ago.
The only way 95% of small businesses out there will ever adopt VoIP is if they are handheld through the process. Even if they know they'll save a ton of dough, working phones are just too critical to companies for them to throw caution to the wind. At the risk of giving away trade secrets ;-) that's the angle the VoIP company [brightideavoip.com] I work for is taking. We seek out partnerships with independant computer techies, VARs, and consultants who have small businesses as clients. These are the people that have the ear of business owners when it comes to making technology decisions. In return, we pay the partner a monthly stipend/retainer to support the subscriber. Businesses are *much* more likley to adopt something like this if they know they have a local expert that they contact in case of problems.
While Skype is cool and can save them ton a cash what's even more important to businesses is a level of trust. I don't know a business owner in their right mind who would put their phone service in eBay's (the owner of Skype) hands. Their level of customer service is worse than Verizon.
Re:No More Phones? (Score:2)
It's clear they are trying to get you to use paypal (another ebay company) which rips you off every way they can and charges outragous rates.
Skype for business? Not till you can actually buy the damned th
"Sounds" good to me ! (Score:2, Interesting)
Here's a link to the biz-section : http://www.skype.com/business/ [skype.com]
skype 2 for MacOS... (Score:2, Interesting)
I'd really like to have visio-conferences from my powerbook...
Re:skype 2 for MacOS... (Score:2)
Anyone from Skype reading this - hurry up with Skype 2 for Mac. It will be a perfect match for the latest Apple Power Books.
But does it... (Score:2)
Re:skype 2 for MacOS... (Score:2, Funny)
Real soon now. Now that Mac OS runs on Intel CPUs there's really no real reason any more to hold back.
So what will PPC users be restricted to ;) (Score:1)
So when your DSL goes down.... (Score:2, Interesting)
Re:So when your DSL goes down.... (Score:3, Interesting)
Not all businesses are as dependent on Internet as mine (web development)... But many businesses still keep their cell phones around. And with some VoIP providers, you can have your calls forwarded to your cell phone.
Re:So when your DSL goes down.... (Score:2)
Re:So when your DSL goes down.... (Score:2)
Skype for Linux (Score:1, Interesting)
Re:Skype for Linux (Score:4, Interesting)
Failing that, just use a commonly-available hardware SIP phone which will work with the Asterisk software PABX.
So what will the big phone companies do now? (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:So what will the big phone companies do now? (Score:3, Funny)
Re:So what will the big phone companies do now? (Score:2, Interesting)
So, it's possible that we will see great diversification on the telco side with other companies like Skype coming in to fill in the gaps.
Most small businesses though would probably choose to
Re:So what will the big phone companies do now? (Score:2)
Something must have been wrong with the business model, or they just didn't do it right. The people that have it say it's a good bundled package, and their speed tests, etc... are good, but it's not expanding and hasn't for some time.
Re:So what will the big phone companies do now? (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:So what will the big phone companies do now? (Score:2)
Regards,
Steve
Re:So what will the big phone companies do now? (Score:3, Insightful)
They are going to charge for the bandwith to go over their lines, attempt to pay off legislators to block its adoption, make sure it becomes "unreliable" when reaching customers that use their lines, put millions into advertising against it, etc.
With the (again, bleh) continued consolidation of the telcos, they are only getting stronger. You think that they are go
Re:So what will the big phone companies do now? (Score:1)
It's always interesting to see who slashdot readers back in a fight.
In one corner - huge behemoth telcos
In the other corner - a one-time startup, who have devised a system based on proprietary protocols which they refuse to publish, and is totally inoperable with recognised standards; now owned by a behemoth of net retailing
No contest - proprietary systems & protocols are lower in the slashdot pecking order than the age-old net-head vs. bell-head rivalries and embedded hatred of telco operators (espe
Congratulations, Skype! (Score:5, Funny)
There should be an award for these things to improve
Re:Congratulations, Skype! (Score:1, Interesting)
Re:Congratulations, Skype! (Score:2)
That's so typical of a grumpy Slashdot AC comment.
Re:Congratulations, Skype! (Score:2)
With VOIP becoming more attarctive by the day.. (Score:2, Interesting)
Re:With VOIP becoming more attarctive by the day.. (Score:4, Informative)
Skype is reckoned to be encrypted, but this claim cannot be verified, as the source code is not available for perusal; it must be assumed that at least Skype themselves, and possibly The Authorities, have the power to listen to Skype calls.
SIP or IAX over SSL/TLS would be much more secure, since these are open protocols and the only secret is the encryption key.
Re:With VOIP becoming more attarctive by the day.. (Score:1)
Classification of encrypted traffic (Score:2)
By stream characteristics I mean timing of packets, bandwidth, endpoints, directional parity, and things like that.
Examples:
If a stream has real-time characteristics (ie. packets are roughly equally spaced in time, use more realtime protocol like UDP, etc), is bidi
They're already trying... (Score:2, Interesting)
Re:They're already trying... (Score:1)
Medium to big businesses (Score:1)
"Skype has launched a new offensive to go after small business dollars. From the BusinessWeek article: 'The company is unveiling Skype for Business, aimed at small companies with fewer than 10 employees...
So..medium to big businesses can't have this baby? That's discrimination!
They better improve their support! (Score:2, Insightful)
But... (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:But... (Score:1)
Unintended comment (Score:2)
From the article: "A lot of businesses are caught in between paying a lot of money to telcos or getting a substandard service (from consumer VoIP offerings). So Skype is entering at the right time."
You mean, just the right time to offer another VoIP offering with substandard service?
I guess it depends on your definition of "standard". Is it traditional telco-based phone service? Is it the voice quality of that service, or the range/flexibility of business features? I think there is a more platonic "id
Re:Unintended comment (Score:2)
None of these services are what everybody wants. We're on the bleeding edge of this new service as far as consumers are concerned and it will take a few years to iron out.
Can I get a phone now? (Score:2)
- click 'Answer'
- pause iTunes
- put headset microphone near mouth
- say "hello"
- put on headset
- turn off speakers
Skype is my only phone, I work from the house. It's rock solid reliable but I'd love one of the phones that Vonage users get:
http://www.uniden.com/products/index.cfm?cat=consu mer%20voip [uniden.com]
An ACTUAL phone, not connected to my computer, but ethernet jack in the back. I give it my Skype account and it connects.
Re:Can I get a phone now? (Score:1)
http://www.voipvoice.com/UConnect.htm [voipvoice.com]
Yes it still requires my PC to be powered on but it enables my normal phone to be used as a Skype phone by simply hitting ** before I dial. Incoming calls generate a different ring pattern so you know it's a Skype call and it even passes the Caller ID to the phone. Oh and it was cheap too.
Re:Can I get a phone now? (Score:2)
Re:Can I get a phone now? (Score:2)
http://tools.netgear.com/skype/ [netgear.com]
Expected 2nd quarter 2006.
Thanks.
Re:Can I get a phone now? (Score:2)
Skype didn't work for us (Score:4, Informative)
Skype = Hype.
Re:Skype didn't work for us (Score:1)
Re:Skype didn't work for us (Score:1)
Re:Skype didn't work for us (Score:4, Informative)
Re:Skype didn't work for us (Score:2)
Re:Skype didn't work for us (Score:2)
Re:Skype didn't work for us (Score:2)
They are missing a smart move (Score:2)
Re:They are missing a smart move (Score:1)
It's going to take a lot of French Café work, or possibly even an inside job, to hack Skype's protocols open; and it's more likely that Skype will go out of business before that happens.
Re:They are missing a smart move (Score:2)
Now as to reverse engineering, well, yes, that would take a lot of work. But it always does. And yet, it happens all the time. Think in terms of all the cracks in Windows as well as the DVD CSS.
Re:They are missing a smart move (Score:1)
Skype vs Vonage vs ...? (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:Skype vs Vonage vs ...? (Score:3, Informative)
Re:Skype vs Vonage vs ...? (Score:1)
Why not use a phone camera and file transfer and keep the trees where they belong?
In fact all average office paperwork can be photographed and archived using a digital camera, phone or scanner, then the should-be-obsoleted paper can go for recycling/energy recovery.
Should be no need for paper/fax with proper systems in place.
Inertia (Score:1)
Yeah, good plan. The next time I have a customer who wants to fax me a purchase order or have me fax him an invoice, I'll just tell him to fuck off and keep his money until he gets a "proper system" in place so that I won't have to deal with faxes anymore. Yeah, I bet I'll be real successful with that approach. I'm sure customers will be just falling all over themselves to reorganize their bureaucracies to suit my need to not have faxes going in and out of my office...
Get real. I mean, what an idiotic
Re:Inertia (Score:1)
Re:Skype vs Vonage vs ...? (Score:1)
Re:Skype vs Vonage vs ...? (Score:2)
Re:Skype vs Vonage vs ...? (Score:2)
"A true P2P system, in our opinion, is one where all nodes in a network join together dynamically to participate in traffic routing-, processing- and bandwidth intensive tasks that would otherwise be handled by central servers."
Of course your traffic isn't passing through Skype's servers. It doesn't need to. It's passing through everyone elses machine thats using Skype.
With vonage your traffic goes through only one other party while with Skype it passes through ev
Security? (Score:1, Interesting)
Re:Security? (Score:1, Informative)
Toronto Wifi Network (Score:2, Interesting)
Skype can be turned into a botnet ... (Score:3, Interesting)
The real question (Score:1)
Stiff competition (Score:4, Interesting)
Would you rather have;
1) A completely open system, based on commodity hardware
or
2) Locked in system?
Most people I talk with love asterisk BECAUSE it's based on standards. These are business owners I'm talking about. They dislike avaya's and co attempts to lock them in, and appreciate asterisk's openness.
Well, that, and asterisk can do *ANYTHING*.
Add in the fact they setup arbitrary limitations, and I don't think they are taking the business sector seriously.
Re:Stiff competition (Score:2)
Oh, and yes, I'm an happy asterisk user and I avoid skype.
BTW, talking about avaya, they also took lessons from Skype, and now have p2p ip phones
If skype wants to win they need ASTERISK (Score:2)
Most businesses dont want seperate phones but a phone system unless you are a one man shop trying to look like a bigger business.
i 3 skype period (Score:1)
Cripple Ware (Score:2)
asterisk and salesforce (Score:1)
Asterisk really needs this sort of integration within salesforce. All it would take is a small desktop client that will talk with the asterisk box to make this work. If the asterisk community were to come up w
Skype is hitting the pipe (Score:2)
Transclick and Skype (Score:1)
Call me crazy, but Google should buy Skype. (Score:2)
Just my
Re:Call me crazy, but Google should buy Skype. (Score:1)
Re:Call me crazy, but Google should buy Skype. (Score:1)
Re:Call me crazy, but Google should buy Skype. (Score:1)
Integration BABY!! (Score:1, Informative)
Maybe you should look at Vonexus from Interactive Intelligence (ININ).
This is the king of the the SIP IP telephony small business world. Taking their queues from their big brother CIC, king of the SIP IP Call Center industry.