Is Skype ready yet?

posted on 6th December 2006 by Jon

There’s a great deal of talk at the moment about whether Skype is now ready to go from a fun tool that connects friends for free, to a serious corporate tool that companies are happy to include as part of their communications arsenal.

I can only speak from my own experience of this technology when adding my bit to this discussion. Working in a small office, with a dedicated set of consultants, some of whom are based remotely has led us to use Skype frequently to keep in touch, thus saving on the cost of traditional phone bills. The quality has not always been great, but generally, it’s a service I would recommend. However, would I dare use this service with some of our bigger clients? The answer is probably no, not yet. The problem, as I see it, is that the Skype logo itself is and possibly always will be viewed as a fun little tool that one would use with their friends, but not necessarily on the professional front. In the same way that I would direct a friend to e-mail me on my hotmail account, I would generally try to keep my Skype account for less important calls.

Having said that, I do have a Skype-me icon in the signature of my e-mails and have started to add a few clients to my list of Skype contacts, so things could be slowly changing. With over 50million users worldwide, I guess it won’t be long before this does move into the corporate world.

The newest version, Skype 3.0 (currently in beta), appears to be making good on the goal of attracting business customers. In fact, it boasts a business version that’s easy to deploy to multiple machines on a network using Windows Installer packages, and companies can centrally manage multiple accounts with the Business Control Panel. The administrator can then allocate Skype phone numbers and voice mail to users.

There are other VOIP packages out there but Skype has the advantage in that it is free to download and use. This could actually work against the company as the IT Managers that I’ve come across don’t have issues with paying for software (mainly because it ain’t their money). In fact, they would rather pay and know that they are receiving a higher level of service and support as opposed to get something for free and be almost solely responsible when the sh*t hits the fan.

It will be interesting to see how this develops…