Skype for Business: Interop2009 video

Stefan Öberg spoke at Interop 2009 last month, as Jim Courtney reported and Öberg blogged.

Two key takeaways.

First, Skype plans to formalize and extend its premium (prioritized queue, private resources) online customer support for enterprises and to deliver local language, in-country customer support through channel partners.

Last, Stefan said survey results show Skype is making its way into US and UK workplaces.

The slides go by very fast, so here are screenshots on from the Stefan Öberg's Skype for Business presentation at Interop 2009 flickr set. The comments below are mine.

hmmm. "The future of business communications" is a pretty big scope.

Not much new about the consumerization of IT. Been going on for generations. Mobile phones were smuggled in. Wi-Fi, Macs, even PCs were first brought to work by employees. Here's a 2005 Gartner release saying "Consumerization Will Be Most Significant Trend Affecting IT During Next 10 Years."

Tough times call for desperate measures. Even "consumer grade" tools will do if they save lots of money.

We do have lots of connectivity, for now. Good enough for Skype video calls.

Not just by IT employees but by everyone. Darned employees, using strange software and connectivity in ways we didn't plan.

 

We have one life, and we spend it at home, at school, and working. Our tools are becoming closer to us, less tied to or provided by our employers.

Presence will be matter when people stop lying about their availability. Skype's presence service only lets you set one presence message for everyone. Yet you might be available to your best customer and not available for Bob from the accounting department.

More stats... 

Oh, and Skype Lite is coming out for the Blackberry this month.

Harder questions: What percent of smartphone users in the UK and US have ever downloaded an application? What percentage of smartphones sold in the US and UK will come with Skype preloaded?

Less integrated than bolted on or sitting next to your existing workflow. With a few limited exceptions, you cannot build Skype into an enterprise application. Unless you consider Outlook an enterprise workflow app.

Of the nine applications shown above, five were made by Skype, and three were made by one Skype developer. Not exactly a robust ecosystem. 

The "tools" talking points are real accomplishments, although far from complete. Skype offers a version specifically for easy configuration (networking options and feature crippling) by IT. The readable admin guide to Skype has been useful in explaining how to make Skype installations conform to company security policies and assert control over users. Skype's business control panel is a first stab at letting companies manage user accounts and distribute account funds.

"Enhanced service" as used here means customer service and technical support. Interoperability, well, Skype's not there yet but it's nice to hear executives acknowledge it as an opportunity.

The closing slides say Skype is good wherever you work (office, travelling, at home).

Critique: A friend in the audience told me it was too salesy for the Interop IT crowd. Everyone there knew Skype already and they generally appreciate live demos more than PowerPoint. I tend to agree. The best parts of the talk were the hard numbers and the real world stories of companies putting Skype to work. Using real company names and showing photos or video of people using the tools at work would have been more meaningful.

See also:

• Voice On The Web: Skype’s Stefan Öberg @ Interop: Stealthing Skype Into Business, But Cover the Entire Skype Ecosystem
• Gartner: Consumerization: The IT Civil War.
• Ars Technica: Analysis: IT consumerization and the future of work(2008). "'IT consumerization' is one of the more unwieldy buzzwords to come down the pike in some time, which is a shame, because there's definitely something to it. Here's a look at three factors that contribute to the IT consumerization trend, and at what this trend may mean for the future of how we work."

tags: skype, interop, interop2009, interop09, vegas, lasvegas, skypeforbusiness, business, enterprise, stats, statistics, trends, consumerization

Call me at +1-510-455-4384, Skype me, follow @skypejournal and @Phil Wolff.
Visit our Skype Journal private roundtable, one of the longest running public Skype chats.