Skype Addresses the Enterprise, But is it Time to Take the Plunge?

By Robin Gareiss, Nemertes executive vice president & sr. founding partner

A growing number of IT staffs are assessing Skype [1], underscoring the trend toward grassroots adoption of Internet-based phone services—integrated with contact lists—that make it easy to reach customers and colleagues worldwide. Skype last week said it’s (finally) planning on addressing some key enterprise requirements.

Skype, owned by Ebay [2] (NASDAQ: EBAY [3]), has seen its successful consumer model infiltrate the business market: 30% of its customer say they use the service for work. For the past year, several enterprise IT executives have discussed with Nemertes whether they should be more formally considering Skype (or other free services from vendors such as PhoneGaim [4] and Gizmo [5]) for their mobile workers.

We have advised against it because Skype doesn’t have enterprise-grade, 24x7 customer service; its security framework is proprietary; it’s difficult to manage, and sound quality is sub-par. When some of these enterprises reached out to Skype to discuss enterprise concerns, they were met with resounding silence.

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