Skype dials in to business

Mike Barton
source: http://news.yahoo.com/s/infoworld/20...N5bnN1YmNhdA--
12 minutes ago

San Francisco (InfoWorld) -

The consumer VoIP (Voice over Internet Protocol) darling Skype dialed in to small-business and branch office needs Thursday with a new offering, Skype for Business.

The move builds on Skype’s existing small business offerings with a dedicated Web site, skype.biz, and support, new hardware and new features to better manage groups of users and prepaid accounts, Skype said Thursday.

Many eyes have been on the eBay-owned company since its bold move early this year to weave its household-name IP telephony software into Salesforce.com to offer click-to-call and presence to the hosted CRM tool.

The move is at least enough to boost its revenue and let it grow beyond its customer base of 75 million.

Unlike with consumers, who use Skype mainly to make free calls to other Skype users, businesses are paying for the ability to call out to PSTN numbers from a personal computer. The cost is about $35 a year.

Standard Centrex lines run about $50 a month per line. Other VoIP players such as Vonage offer a sweet spot on the price scale for SMBs at about $40 a month.

In other words, the door is wide open for tight-budgeted small businesses, and Sklype is aiming straight at them.

Skype’s vice president of global market marketing, Saul Klein, told InfoWorld the aim of Skype for Business was the “neglected” small office with between one and 10 people.

“[We want to] be the champion of micro-business,” Klein said.

The business opportunity is huge, analysts say. Such hosted VoIP services for business are expected to be worth $785 million in 2009, up from $233 million last year, according to the Yankee Group.

Rivals are not standing still. AOL has said it will offer a product with its upgrade of Instant Messenger this year that will be aimed at small business. Yahoo and Microsoft struck a deal last year to work together on IM for Microsoft’s Live Communications Server.

Converging Internet telephony with hosted and desktop applications took a small step forward with Cisco’s announcement this week it was working with Citrix and Microsoft.

However, Klein said the main advantage Internet-based solutions such as Skype was its ability to be used wherever someone could connect to the Internet.

Taking advantage of such mobility was getting a boost from third-party vendors such as Plantronics, which also at CeBit announced Thursday its new Voyager 510 Bluetooth headset, which allows people to use their cell phones for cell and internet calls, Klein said.

Another product announced Thursday small businesses were asking for, he said, was USRobotics’ USB Internet speakerphone.

__________________