IP Democracy: Skype Targets Small Businesses

The LA Times James Granelli has this piece today about Skype’s new effort to capture small business customers, called Skype for Business.

As part of the new program, Skype is introducing a lot of bells-and-whistles that would appeal to small business owners, including the ability to conference call with up to 500 people and translation of calls from English into other languages.

As part of its push into the business market, Skype also is unveiling today third-party products such as speaker phones, cordless Internet phones and electronic switching gear, as well as software programs to share documents and presentations over the computer during calls, to make conference calls with as many as 500 people and to translate calls in English into French, Spanish, Cantonese or Mandarin.

This move makes Skype look a lot like a more traditional VoIP provider, far from its roots as a renegade, free-to-use P2P Internet voice service. Still, it seems like a smart move for the eBay-owned company given the vast market in small business voice service and Skype’s need to start generating serious revenues.

Posted by Cynthia Brumfield on March 9, 2006 8:38 AM to IP Democracy