Ecomm is a fantastic conference (for telecom propeller heads). This year I was only able to do a fly-by. However, the organizers are starting to post videos.
Jonathan Christensen of Skype discusses the latest release of SkypeKit, an SDK for real time communications. SkypeKit is primarily targeted at consumer electronics manufacturers to embed Skype into a wide variety of products – car navigation systems, baby monitors, televisions, etc. It allows manufacturers to leverage “all of Skype’s functionality” without building infrastructure. The kit contains binary run-times ported and optimized for multiple processors and operating systems.
The first part of this video Jonathan talks about the disruption of communications that the Internet heralded- any to any device and a whole new array of devices being connected. The old infrastructure was rigid: dumb devices with a narrow-band voice connection. The internet offers a “new infinitely variable web.” He rejects the notion of a migration or evolution, or a new role for the dumb terminal we call phones. Jonathan says: “It is not an evolution, it’s a disruption.”
He may be right, he stated that Skype transmits 6 months of video every minute. Wow!
After Jonathan finishes the presentation, he takes questions from the audience. Two in particular stood out.
At about 11:30, Steve Sokol from Digium asked about PBX integration options with SkypeKit. Allow me to paraphrase the Skype position on this: No, that’s not allowed. If you want to connect a stupid narrow-band PBX [Asterisk is not] to Skype, it has to be through a stupid narrow-band SIP connection known as Skype Connect. Don’t even think about bringing the future [SkypeKit] to the past [PBX]. Weren’t you listening? It’s not an evolution, geez…
At 17:44 a question is posed around Skype interoperability. No need to paraphrase here, I will provide the direct quote.
“What we are not excited about is people building interop. It is not because we don’t want them to build interop or have interop, it’s just that it is a waste of time.”
So much for the “infinitely variable web.” I agree that Skype is amazing and it fairly earned the title of “mega huge disruptor,” but I am not convinced it will retain that title with such a closed approach.
(Cross-posted @ Pin Drop Soup)
Supporting legacy systems is a distraction and Skype is right to ditch it and avoid wasting time. See how Apple constantly EOL products and people love it. I don’t think Skype should slow itself by focusing on PBX old stuff. The net results probably don’t justify it.
I agree with the comment above. For Skype – particularly under MSFT – to spend the energy required to truly become part of the enterprise and mid-market conversation (I’m talking about the IT decision maker, not the analyst) would be to create significant distraction from continuing to innovate and outright own the consumer online/mobile rich media communication market. Would be a shame to waste the lead they’ve built and with it the opportunity to find creative ways to monetize this unique audience.
On the other hand, while PBX can be well categorized as ‘old stuff’, I do think there lies an opportunity in there for someone to deliver a standards-based screen based communication application that people can actually use, as they move from one screen to another. I’ve given up thinking that the desktop phone is going away anytime soon (the success of supply chain, from manufacturer to VAR, is too deeply connected to it) but I do believe that once a common, easy-to-ramp-on interface makes some inroads in the enterprise market we may finally see users spend less time on their desktop hardware. The incalculable growth of the tablet will see to this, if nothing else.
But we cannot underestimate the power of the IT DM in these scenarios so it should go without say that anyone (Skype or other) who plans to succeed in this segment for screen based communication must appease them. ‘Consumerizing’ IT – a fascinating phenomena in itself – will create the opportunity, but still the IT people will be quicker to give in if the offer talks their language.