Skype Tackles Business Market

On Wednesday, Sept. 23, Skype chief strategy officer Christopher Dean will deliver a joint keynote address to both the VON Conference & Expo and the Channel Partners audiences. VON editor Richard Martin caught up with Dean, via e-mail, to preview his speech and discuss the industry landscape heading into VON.

VON: What made you decide to speak at VON? Can you comment on where you see the industry (advanced IP services including VoIP) at this point, and what needs to happen to move the industry forward in the next 6-12 months?

Christopher Dean: The VON Conference has always been where major shifts in the telecommunications industry have appeared first. Over the years, Skype has played a very active role at the VON conferences, and this year will be no different.

The telecommunications industry worldwide is at an important inflection point, especially with regards to the adoption of voice over IP technology by businesses. More and more companies are looking to VoIP and there are a number of reasons for this.

First, the economy has forced many organizations to finally realize that they can save money by switching to VoIP. But even more importantly, they are increasingly trying to leverage this technology to enhance collaboration among their employees, business partners and customers. One good example is the increasing use of audio conferencing and screen sharing to enable parties in multiple locations to work together on projects.

We hear this all the time at Skype, as companies are looking for ways to save time, become more nimble in business and to break down communications barriers, be these time- or location-based. This really demonstrates the global economy that we’ve become.

VON: Where is Skype in terms of its efforts in approaching the business market? What has the company been able to achieve in the last 12 months, and what do you hope to achieve in terms of enterprise-grade services in the next 12?

CD: Skype sees rapid adoption in the SMB space. It has also seen adoption “within” the large enterprise, but not always “by” the enterprise as a corporate-wide strategy. This is changing, especially due to the current state of the economy, as large companies are increasingly looking to reduce their costs.

For example, in a Skype user study of 4,000 users in the US, UK and China conducted in March 2008, approximately 35 percent of respondents said they were using Skype for business purposes. The feedback we received from business users was that cost and time savings, simplicity and increased productivity have made Skype a great business communications tool. This same survey showed that: