Skype is trying hard to make sense of it’s 2.6 billion dollar evaluation when it was sold to ebay as it’s holding company ebay is now willing to get rid of the company. Skype’s 405 million user peer-to-peer Internet telephony service has recently announced a partnership with Nokia, where it will come pre-loaded, initially on Nokia’s flagship device N97. Now the latest update is that Skype announced a new version supporting corporate phone systems (PBX) which use Session Initiation Protocol.
SkypeforSIP (www.skypeforsip.com) is in Beta and the key-features include
* Receive and manage inbound calls from Skype users worldwide on SIP-enabled PBX systems; connecting the company Web site to the PBX system via click-to-call
* Place calls with Skype to landlines and mobile phones worldwide from any connected SIP-enabled PBX; reducing costs with Skype’s low-cost global rates
* Purchase Skype’s online numbers, to receive calls to the corporate PBX from landlines or mobile phones
* Manage Skype calls using their existing hardware and system applications such as call routing, conferencing, phone menus and voicemail; no additional downloads or training are required
Now what does that exactly mean?
Now you a corporate customer can signup for the service and identify your IP-PBX and associate one or more skype names with your IP-PBX. so that when a skype user calls your skype ID’s it will be redirected to the associated PBX number.
With SIP trunking you can use skype to call PSTN numbers using Skypeout on skype’s cheap calling rates, and also you can buy an online number from skype in any of the 20 supported countries (which doesn’t include India) to receive calls on to your IP-PBX system.
Though the service looks attractive where businesses can now reduce their costs of international calling using skypeout, Dan York pointed out that it’s not quite true for now as SkypeforSIP beta only supports G.729 codec which means that the user has to buy additional licenses from the IP-PBX vendor, while reportedly skype is going through testing to make the much more widely used royalty free G.711 codec very soon.
Skype reportedly had $550 million in revenues last year and it needs to grow revenue fast to make itself a buyable asset.
