There' a really interesting article entitled The Six Gotchas Of Skype For Business by David Greenfield that's been getting a bit of attention the past couple of days. It caught my eye because I've been intrigued by how and where Skype does fit in business.

My premise is that Skype is a great fit for small business, especially the sole proprietorship, home office based business. It's a great tool for people working inside the tech sector with other tech people. Folks who are always at a computer, travel witha laptop or PDA find great benefits to using Skype. As the business grows larger, the benefits and risks may begin to blur. Certainly the large enterprise market has demonstrated great concerns for Skype, and truthfully any peer-to-peer oriented technology.

Since we're seeing more and more push from Skype (See Skype for Business) I'm listing David's six gotchas here, with my comments on each.

1. Skype for Business still doesn't provide centralized reporting, so business won't be able to monitor how users spend Skype credits. There's no way to monitor or prevent, for example, users from calling 900 numbers and the like.

Given the pricing model for Skype, this is less of an issue for the true target market that we might initially think. While centralized reporting and management is crucial to business, this is really just an issue of revamping processes to leverage the economics and convergence Skype could bring to business. This can be solved, and will be with gradual adoption. I don't see this as a show stopper, but rather as a bump in the road.

2. Skype for Business doesn't provide hunt groups where multiple extensions ring when a phone is dialed. Skype was expected to deliver that function in this release.

This is a valid concern for many businesses. Call coverage features and tools like hunt groups are critical to daily operations in many small and mid-sized businesses.

3. Call transfers still aren't provided.

Skype is neither a PBX nor Centrex-like service. While call transfer is a viable and expected business feature, I question whether Skype can or should ever be a replacement for the telephone system. If Skype is used to augment either TDM voice or VoIP services, this may be a moot point. And given the integration shown in Australia between Skype and SIP recently (there's some discussion here), integration is certainly possible, although very immature at present.

4. There's no attendant or IVR function, which would redirect calls to other Skype numbers based on user selection. Many IVR functions can be provided through a Web page, but that won't help users who might be
calling in from the PSTN.

Again, David, and yes Skype, seem to think there's some replacement model for the business telephone system. Integration with the PSTN is achievable at very basic levels. There's lots of work to be done to make it viable.

5. Calls are still encrypted, preventing businesses from ensuring that employees aren't passing information that might violate regulatory restrictions.

To me this points to the proprietary nature of Skype's protocols as problematic. Before they'll be widely accepted in any larger business environment, they'll have to embrace SIP and extend into real-world telecommunications. The Skype universe remains, in some ways, a walled garden that is whole unto itself. The marginal integration to the PSTN we see today in Skype is an approach that will have to change for global business acceptance. I don't see encryption as a problem, but proprietary encryption that precludes monitoring is clearly going to remain problematic for many potential users.

6. Forget about E-911 compliance. There is none.

Of course not. It's not the PSTN and E-911 compliance is neither required, nor expected. But to David's point, it is necessary for business. Absolutely necessary. But doesn't this again point to a reality that Skype cannot be a replacement for more traditional telephony, but might be a worthwhile tool for augmenting the feature set?

Summary Thoughts

I agree with much of what David says. If you're looking to replace your business telecommunications system, Skype comes up far short of the mark. Far.

Skype is a great tool, when it's used as a tool. It's not replacement for a corporate telephone system no matter what the Skype for Business folks say. I'd counter that they're too consumer focused and too far from the mainstream requirements of business telecommuncations systems to make a substantial play for replacing corporate systems. Use Skype as an adjunct to other telecom services, and you can craft a fit that's good for your business.

Skype still poses concerns for enterprise security managers. As Andy Abramson noted recently "A few of us were chatting at VON and realized that the new version of Timbuktu that works with Skype means you can move whole folders." The return of Kazaa via Skype and Timbuktu isn't an innovation that will be widely embraced by sceurity managers. It represents too great a risk to the corporate network.

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