Skype sets eyes on enterprise customers

November 7, 2006, 04:29 PM —  IDG News Service — 

After winning over millions of consumers to its largely free Internet telephone services, Skype Ltd. is preparing to go after businesses eager to reduce their telecommunication costs.

Skype, a provider of VOIP (voice of Internet Protocol) services acquired by Ebay Inc. for US$2.6 billion last year, is developing a range of offerings targeted at the enterprise market, said Skype Senior Director Jonathan Christensen, at the Von conference in Berlin on Monday.

"We're currently working on a call-center service," Christensen said. "And there are more enterprise services on the way. So stay tuned."

Security is a huge concern of all businesses, Christensen acknowledged. "Companies have told us that we don't share enough information with their IT managers," he said. "Information sharing is definitely an issue. We're going to be putting together more white papers and other information to improve this."

Interoperability with public service telephone networks remains difficult and, depending on the network, can degrade call quality, according to Christensen. This is also an issue Skype will need to address to attract corporate users.

Asked if Skype, with annual sales of around $200 million, could ever justify its acquisition price, Christensen said the company will be rolling out many new products over its platform aimed at creating new revenue streams.

But revenue was not the main reason for purchasing Skype, according to Christensen. It was a one-time opportunity.

"On the Internet, there are some successful businesses that are only created once, like Flickr, YouTube and Skype," Christensen said. "For every YouTube, you'll find hundreds of other sites offering nearly the same service. It's what we call major network effect; once it happens, it happens."

» posted by abennett

IDG News Service

Sign up for ITworld's Daily newsletter
Follow ITworld on Twitter @IT_world

I like it!
Post a comment
The content of this field is kept private and will not be shown publicly.
  • Allowed HTML tags: <a> <em> <strong> <cite> <code> <ul> <ol> <li> <dl> <dt> <dd>
  • Lines and paragraphs break automatically.
peer-to-peer

jfruh
Apple syncing patent can't come soon enough

pasmith
New Twitter features borrow from 3rd party clients

Esther Schindler
Open Source Changes the Software Acquisition Process

mikelgan
How to set up continuous podcast play on the new iTunes

David Strom
Five important Windows 7 mobility features

sjvn
Guard your Wi-Fi for your own sake                        

Sandra Henry-Stocker
Grepping on Whole Words

 

Sidekick: The Good News & the Bad News
Either way you look at it Microsoft Data Center management did not follow standards or best practices in this failure. In which case it makes me wonder more about the outsourcing of corporate data much less personal data.
- mburton325

Join the conversation here

The Daily Tip

The Daily TipQuick, practical advice for IT pros. Made fresh daily.

Hot tips:

Want to cash in on your IT savvy? Send your tip to tips@itworld.com. If we post it, we'll send you a $25 Amazon e-gift card.

Newsletters

Subscribe to ITWORLD TODAY and receive the latest IT news and analysis.

I would like to receive offers via email from ITworld partners.
By clicking submit you agree to the terms and conditions outlined in ITworld's privacy policy.
Featured Sponsor

AISO founders envisioned a Web hosting company that was environmentally friendly. While the company employed energy-efficient innovations like solar panels, its infrastructure produced unacceptable power and cooling requirements. Find out how AISO leveraged AMD technology to overcome their challenge in this case study white paper.

In this whitepaper, Scalar explores the opportunity to change the landscape with respect to mission critical databases built around Oracle. Leveraging technologies such as Linux, high-end commodity processing power and Oracle RAC technology to architect, design, build and maintain database infrastructure that delivers maximum availability, reliability and performance at a fraction of traditional cost.

On a typical day, weather.com, the Web site for The Weather Channel in Atlanta, serves up between 15 million and 20 million page views. But in September 2004, when back-to-back hurricanes ransacked Florida, the peak traffic on one day more than tripled: over 70 million page views by more than 7 million unique visitors. Read the full success story now.

Marketplace