How will VoIP evolve now that Microsoft bought Skype?
VoIP has gone from a geeky curiosity to an essential part of business. Today VoIP is a big-money business, and like telephony itself, VoIP continues to change. How will Microsoft's purchase of Skype affect the VoIP landscape?
Answers
VoIP was created by companies that nobody had ever heard of, but it's already evolved into a brand-name recognition game. And the more big, well-recognized companies that move into VoIP, the more mainstream it will become. And companies like Microsoft, whose main line of business is not in the telecom realm, will continue to move into this area. The end result will inevitably be integration of VoIP into a whole new set of business and consumer applications. It's already happening. VoIP is no longer strictly a stand-alone application, it's already being incorporated (by third party companies) into Facebook, for example. We'll see things like a cloud-based wordprocessing app with versioning and unified communications, so groups of people working on an app can not only share information and work collaboratively, they will be able to launch a voice call directly from the document.
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Hi JOiseau,
Microsoft may be using Skype as a social media tool. Here's an interesting article that looks at why Microsoft may have been interested in Skype:
MS Plots Social Networking Stealth Attack With Skype
http://www.technewsworld.com/story/73547.html
Snippet:
"Skype could be a social networking winner once it's really ready for prime time, but it may need some tinkering to get there.
"Skype is a strong enough platform to become their social play, but the functionality isn't there yet," Zeus Kerravala, principal analyst with ZK Research, told the E-Commerce Times. "It has a few social capabilities, but it's really a chat and voice tool. Microsoft will need to put some research and development dollars into Skype. It needs email integration and data posting capabilities."
Skype is a good real-time tool, but it is still not an asynchronous one, which is a significant drawback, Kerravala noted. "Because of that, I think Microsoft is dabbling in social with the goal to be big. They still have a long way to go.""