Skype Announces Skype For Business

conq writes "Skype has launched a new offensive to go after small business dollars. From the BusinessWeek article: 'The company is unveiling Skype for Business, aimed at small companies with fewer than 10 employees, on Mar. 9. Skype for Business will include a new Web site, Skype.biz, as well as a host of features and hardware. While Skype has introduced features appealing to business users one by one for the past six months, the new announcement marks the beginning of a concerted effort.'"

Skype didn't work for us

[silverbax]

We signed up with Skype to test it out - it took WEEKS to get set up, although our payment cleared immediately. We never recieved real response in the way of customer service, so we moved to NetZero's VOIP - it was set up within minutes, has always worked and calls anywhere.

Skype = Hype.

Re:With VOIP becoming more attarctive by the day..

[ajs318]

Encrypted VOIP will be damn nigh impossible to tax or regulate. Encrypted traffic is just encrypted data; and there is no way to know what it is without decrypting it. Which, depending on the encryption algorithm, may well take a long, long time and is not even certain to produce anything useful {since any given cyphertext could be the result of any one of a large number of plaintext/key pairs}.

Skype is reckoned to be encrypted, but this claim cannot be verified, as the source code is not available for perusal; it must be assumed that at least Skype themselves, and possibly The Authorities, have the power to listen to Skype calls.

SIP or IAX over SSL/TLS would be much more secure, since these are open protocols and the only secret is the encryption key.

Re:Skype vs Vonage vs ...?

[Lokni]

The question is... does Vonage's fax service work? In my experience... no it does not. I tried hard with several fax machines to get a fax to go over Vonage. Couldn't do it.

Re:Skype didn't work for us

[moniker_21]

I had that exact same problem. Well, almost exactly the same. It took about 24 hours and a strongly worded email from me to get my account acvitated, even though my payment had cleared already. They told me they are having intermitent problems with their payment system wherein some accounts take longer to be activated then others. It was a frusterating start, but once I did get setup I've found Skype to be pretty awesome.

Re:Security?

[Anonymous Coward]

Go read http://www.skype.com/help/faq/privacy.html [skype.com]

Integration BABY!!

[Anonymous Coward]

If you are like most small businesses, you probably use MS products, you probably have an Win2000 or Win2003 server, and if you want to stick with open standards (SIP)...

Maybe you should look at Vonexus from Interactive Intelligence (ININ).

This is the king of the the SIP IP telephony small business world. Taking their queues from their big brother CIC, king of the SIP IP Call Center industry.