Skype has continued to make enterprise inroads as an affordable and
reliable VoIP solution, and one Chicago-based company has taken
that to the next level, deploying a gateway that bridges Skype to
corporate desk phones.
The Chicago headquarters of Eastern Accents, a manufacturer of
luxury bedding and decorative home furnishings, is in constant
contact with its branch office in China and international vendors
across the globe.
According to Eastern Accents' IT director, Elvin Rakhmankulov,
those calls -- necessary to keep the business running -- were
costing the company a bundle in long-distance charges.
"Home furnishings is increasingly a global business," he said.
"Manufacturing, design and sales involves a huge amount of
person-to-person interaction, much of which takes place by
voice."
Using the corporate 3Com voice system, Eastern Accents initially
tried to create a direct VoIP connection between Chicago and China,
but the connection was fraught with latency and jitter, making
international calling troublesome -- indeed, nearly impossible.
Rakhmankulov turned to Skype, a popular Internet-based VoIP
calling service. But to give hundreds of employees the Skype
capabilities would require that they all have a headset and
microphone connected to their PCs. Also, each Skype phone number
would need a different computer, which would negate the cost-saving
benefits of using Skype in the first place.
After some investigation, Rakhmankulov came across the VoSKY
Exchange, a Skype-certified VoIP gateway, made by Actiontec
Electronics, which integrates to the office phone system without
requiring changes to the existing PBX equipment, desk phones, user
PCs or user phone behavior.
According to Actiontec, VoSKY Exchange is a business-class tool
that can support applications such as Skype trunking, inter-office
connectivity, remote VoIP access and Web click-to-call. It is rack
mountable and stackable to support 16 concurrent inbound and
unlimited outbound Skype calls, meaning that corporations can use
free Skype-to-Skype calls and low-cost SkypeOUT international
calls.
VoSKY Exchange also centralizes all Skype activities to a single
computer and works with any TDM or IP-PBX, according to
Actiontec.
Rakhmankulov said Skype calls can now be routed to and from end
users' standard desk phones over their corporate voice system.
"Our people can just pick up their desk phone and make a
low-cost international VoIP call as easily as calling across the
street," he said.
In the year or so since Eastern Accents added VoSKY Exchange to
its voice system, there have been no problems with latency or
jitter, he said. In total, Eastern Accents has reduced its overseas
calling costs by more than 30%.
"Compared to what we were paying before, we're not paying
anything," he said.
In recent months, Skype has become a viable VoIP tool for
companies that are looking to save money while reaping the benefits
of some advanced VoIP features.
According to Yankee Group senior vice president Zeus Kerravala,
Skype offers high-quality voice that in many cases is free, while
also offering a more affordable international calling package.
Kerravala added that Skype is the perfect solution for today's
"anywhere worker," the latest breed of worker who can't be tied to
a desk or any specific location.
"It's perfect for companies with a lot of global employees," he
said. "You get free calls and presence status. You can chat and
move files across it. So you get more features for less money. It's
hard to find a problem with that."
One issue, which has been raised many times with Skype in the
enterprise, is that IT has relatively little control over its use.
Solutions such as VoSKY Exchange give control back to IT,
however.
Another problem is that since Skype uses the Internet as a
transport, quality can sometimes be unpredictable, Kerravala said,
especially when Skype goes off-net. But he said that Skype-to-Skype
calls, regardless of distance, retain high call quality, meaning
that they have clear audio and don't fall victim to latency and
jitter.
"Skype builds the codecs into the endpoints," he said. "A
regular phone is narrow-band audio; Skype is wide band, so you get
higher-quality calls."