What took Skype so long ? So long in fact that they have almost relinquished part of the corporate market to other SIP providers ?
I’m talking about Skype for SIP. And some of you might be wondering what on earth I’m talking about.
Skype of course needs no explanation. Let me provide a brief explanation of what SIP is.
SIP is an open standards based protocol used for Voice over IP inter compatibility between multiple carriers, service providers, hardware providers … The SIP standard has already, and will continue to re-define the scope of telecommunications moving forward.
Almost gone are the days of proprietary TDM based standards. PRI is an example of TDM (Time Division Multiplexing). And no, PRI isn’t dead, not even close. It’s EXTREMELY reliable and stable. But, SIP trunking is starting to become more widely deployed by the carriers, and more widely accepted by the business market as an acceptable back-up to PRI service.
My laptop extension on my MAC is a SIP end point authenticated to an Asterisk (at times), and Avaya (at other times) switch at the core. I also use Skype for long distance calling, but, often wondered why I couldn’t authenticate my Skype end point to both the Skype cloud and my own PBX.
Well, now you can.
Although Skype for Business, SIP Skype, is in BETA, at least they’re moving in the right direction. Finally. Skype has traditionally believed that they could move in their own direction and the rest of the world would follow. In the personal use home market maybe. In the corporate market – NO WAY.
Skype needs to adapt to the rest of the world standard, not the other way around. And Skype for SIP is the first step in that direction. And in case you didn’t know the parent company of Avaya, SIlver Lakes, purchased Skype in early September 2009. I wonder if Silver Lakes is moving Skype in some new directions.
More: I stand corrected (sort of). I received this comment from someone on the blog as follows:
Skype first announced Skype for SIP in March 2009 (http://share.skype.com/sites/business/2009/03/skype_for_sip_now_available.html), long before any of the new investors were involved.
The announcement earlier this month (http://share.skype.com/sites/business/2009/12/skype_for_sip_beta_program_ope.html) simply kicked off the Open Beta phase of the Skype for SIP program; until now, it has only been available to a small number of business customers for testing.
Written by: Jeff Wiener. www.digitcom.ca. Follow TheTelecomBlog.com by: RSS, Twitter, Identi.ca, or Friendfeed
{ 2 comments… read them below or add one }
Jeff,
Skype first announced Skype for SIP in March 2009 (http://share.skype.com/sites/business/2009/03/skype_for_sip_now_available.html), long before any of the new investors were involved.
The announcement earlier this month (http://share.skype.com/sites/business/2009/12/skype_for_sip_beta_program_ope.html) simply kicked off the Open Beta phase of the Skype for SIP program; until now, it has only been available to a small number of business customers for testing.
Thanks for your interest in Skype for SIP.
Chaim Haas
Kaplow (PR agency for Skype)
If calls made to the PSTN over Skype for SIP are traversing the public internet on supernodes, which are inherently insecure, how can enterprises be comfortable and compliant about client’s information being passed in this way? I’ve been looking at Skype for a couple of years now and wanting to save perhaps a few hundred thousand dollars a year in telecom bills but the people responsible for security will not allow it to happen until other big banks and financial institutions are first to dive in.
Would it make sense for Skype to put up a network of managed supernodes for enterprise customers and charge them for it? What is Skype’s plan to really engage the enterprise market where keeping client information secure is a compliance issue?