Here's the only news that Skype executives thought they were going to be making today: The official rollout of Skype Connect 1.0, formerly known as Skype for SIP.
In a briefing with No Jitter, David Gurle, who's VP and GM of Skype for Business, highlighted the 2,400 customers around the world that adopted Skype for SIP during the beta period. He also said that Skype will offer more details on its go-to-market strategy for Skype Connect when it makes a channel-related announcement later in the year.
Basically, Skype Connect lets an enterprise make a back-end connection between its PBX--IP or TDM0--and the Skype cloud, as shown below:
That essentially puts remote Skype users on the network and provides the following benefits, according to Skype:
* Make outbound calls from desktop phones to landlines and mobiles worldwide billed at Skype's standard per-minute calling rates
* Receive inbound calls from Skype connected users worldwide by placing Skype's Click & Call buttons on their Web sites
* Receive calls from landlines or mobile phones in the corporate PBX using Skype's online numbers that have been purchased separately
* Manage Skype calls using existing PBX or UC systems' features such as call routing, automatic call distribution, conferencing, auto-attendant, voicemail, call recording and logging
* Receive inbound calls from Skype connected users worldwide by placing Skype's Click & Call buttons on their Web sites
* Receive calls from landlines or mobile phones in the corporate PBX using Skype's online numbers that have been purchased separately
* Manage Skype calls using existing PBX or UC systems' features such as call routing, automatic call distribution, conferencing, auto-attendant, voicemail, call recording and logging
What it won't do--and what Skype does not foresee doing anytime soon, according to David Gurle--is let the Skype client talk natively to the proprietary IP-PBX as a client.
Still, Gurle expects the list of certified PBXs that work with Skype Connect to continue to grow. Currently, Cisco, Siemens and ShoreTel are among those certified, along with several gateway vendors that allow Skype Connect to link with legacy TDM PBXs.
But again, just the fact that Skype has to certify individual vendors for its SIP product tells you just how far we are from living in a world where there's true interoperability based on SIP (or any other standard, for that matter).
