2007-11-30

Skype for businesses

Through the Skype Forum, i discovered that full time USA graduate student Charmaine Walker, who will soon become a school librarian, just completed a paper on Emerging Technologies and chose Skype as her topic. She says on the forum: “I have been a user since its inception in 2003 and think it is truly marvellous”.

I picked some interesting phrases out of her 9 pages work, which could convince businesses to use Skype (some minor editing by myself):
  • install the program where and when needed on as many computers at no cost;
  • as the equipment is owned, it eliminates the need for another company to maintain and upgrade an existing VoIP tool;
  • as Skype is simply a software program, it does not have any operational, maintenance, or management expenses;
  • there are no early termination fees associated with a VoIP provider contract if it no longer meets the business’s needs;
  • businesses can simply uninstall the Skype program without incurring a penalty and/or returning another company’s equipment;
  • aside from the expense of a microphone and speakers or handset to make and receive calls, Skype’s optional extras are extremely low in comparison to other VoIP providers.
Valid arguments for small businesses (my opinion!).

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

One question I can't figure out for our business, who is considering using Skype for our primary office communication system is how do we handle the switch board issue and faxing?

when someone calls our main line it needs to go to a general voice recording but I don't think we can do that with Skpye nor is there an easy solution for sending and recieving faxes.
If you have a solution for either of these problems, I would love to hear it.
Justin
justin@edulinkinc.com

Jean Mercier said...

For faxing there is a solution, see:
http://www.pamfax.biz/

For your second question, i think you can find a solution here:
http://www.zipcom.com.tw/

Good luck