Two back-to-back announcements from Skype have got me wondering whether Skype could become a seriously disruptive technology in the business voice market.
Last week I blogged about the Skype partnership with Angel.com. The Angel partnership allows a business to build an IVR attached to its Skype account, potentially allowing Skype to serve as a sophisticated voice system for a business.
Then this week came the announcement that Polycom is announcing a portable speakerphone that works with Skype, blogged about by Rich Tehrani. Rich makes the point that this announcement is "a huge legitimizer for Skype in the enterprise."
If Skype keeps adding capabilities like this, I think there's a serious possibility that Skype could suddenly emerge from the margins to start grabbing real market share in the business voice arena.
(Also interesting: Tom Keating's review today of the RTX Dualphone Skype telephone, a handset which doubles as a Skype phone and a PSTN phone.)
AB -- 5/2/06
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More and more companies are integrating with skype. Ofcourse CRM (Customer Relationship Management) would be the first area enterprise applications need to think skype.
Companies like Salesboom.com and Salesforce are already offering a skype feature to allow users the ability to make free or almost free VOIP calls from withen the application itself.
While Salesboom.com offers this integration free of charge, Salesforce will charge for it.