I have always favored Skype over other instant messaging apps because of one thing: its proclaimed strong encryption behind the scenes. I know of companies that’ll summon the IT SWAT team to your cubicle if you’re found to have disabled the anti-virus software on your PC, yet nobody cares if you’re chatting away (possible company secrets?) on Yahoo or MSN instant messager. With trojans, malware, and “spim” (spam on IM) on the rise constantly trying to infiltrate your PC, it’s unbelievable that a company wouldn’t consider security measures on the IM front.

But now a researcher, Efim Bushmanov, has reverse engineered Skype’s protocol and encryption mechanism. Moreover, he’s made all his research material available online — free of charge. In summary with words that’ll pique the interest of any serious hacker (black and whitehats alike):

You will see what it uses strong AES and RSA encryption with public key infrastructure.

Bushmanov may have a noble intent of open sourcing Skype with this freelance research project, but it’s doubtful that Microsoft (Skype’s new owner) shares the same sentiment. In fact, Skype is also the preferred communication tool among worldwide dissidents and activists, so the impact of this very public research will definitely make waves throughout regions such as China and the Arab world.

Although this research is evidence that my future Skype sessions won’t be as safe as previously implied, perhaps it’s a good thing that this illusion of secure communications is being exposed. After all, if one person was able to reverse engineer it, what’s to say that it hasn’t already been done in some top secret government agency with much more resources at its disposal?

It’ll be very interesting to see how this story develops, not only from the technical perspective, but also the legal and geopolitical issues surrounding it.

So it’s official: Skype did not end up in Google or Facebook’s embrace; it now belongs to Microsoft, as CEO Tony Bates wrote on its blog.

I was hoping to see Skype go through with its IPO later this year as a master of its own destiny. A great company with a time-tested product, now we’re left wondering how Skype would’ve fared independently.

There’s a lot of techno-analyses on this $8.5 billion deal — the largest acquisition made by Microsoft. Will Live Messenger survive? Will Skype end up in Lync? Will Microsoft continue to support Skype on non-MS platforms (e.g. Mac, Linux, iOS, Android, etc.)? With this acquisition there will be many overlapping products, but Microsoft scores with owning Skype intellectual properties, especially in peer-to-peer communications — something quite useful for Microsoft’s cloud initiatives.

Some have questioned whether Skype itself will survive under the Redmond Giant, taking a page from history about the former glory days of Hotmail. Yahoo Mail and Gmail have pushed Hotmail into the preferred email service to receive spam and unwanted newsletters. Let’s hope Skype doesn’t end up in a similar fate as Hotmail.

My real question, however, is to CEO Tony Bates: What happened? Was the IPO pressure too great and the investors insisted on selling? They had the most to gain from the $8.5 billion sale in cold, hard Microsoft cash. According to GigaOm:

• Using the $8.5 billion price as the likely sale price, eBay gets $2.55 billion for its 30 percent stake in Skype. So in the end, eBay did make money on the Skype deal.
• Niklas Zennström and Janus Friis, the co-founders with their 14-percent stake, take home about $1.19 billion. Damn, these guys know how to double dip!
• Silver Lake, Andreessen Horowitz and the Canada Pension Plan Investment Board (CPPIB) own 56 percent of the company and that stake is worth $4.76 billion.
• Andreessen Horowitz had 3 percent of the deal and made $205 million profit on their $50 million initial investment.

I would think that Bates would’ve wanted to stay independent instead of getting sold. After all, he was formerly with Cisco and headed the enterprise groups, responsible for 80 percent of Cisco’s business and profits. Why would he leave the Cisco bureaucracy in hopes to enter another gigantic bureaucratic organization? He was thriving at the helm of Skype. Instead of reporting to John Chambers, now he’ll report to Steve Ballmer. Good luck with that.

To Microsoft: I don’t want to see a BSoD when I’m on Skype video with somebody, okay? Thanks.

A few days ago Reuters reported that Facebook and Google are fighting to either buyout Skype or form some sort of joint venture with the ubiquitous VOIP company. In August 2010 Skype filed the papers to go public, but has since postponed the IPO until the second half of this year.

It seems that the longer Skype waits to IPO, the more momentum diminishes. Would FaceSkype or Google Skype even make sense?

To me it looks a bit far fetched. Neither of these Internet giants need Skype. Facebook and Google are the two largest Web companies on Earth, and both companies already offer voice (even video) capabilities. Facebook’s focus has always been turning itself into a platform, and has been fairly successful at that. Several third-party VOIP and videoconference apps currently exist on Facebook, and Facebook is just fine by that. How would developers of these VOIP/videoconference apps react if Skype is baked into Facebook? Facebook just wants people to come on the site for everything. It wants to be the Interweb, the place where those voice and video bits pass through. And all that personal data…

Google’s all about its search and online advertising. It has acquired a few communications-related companies in the past, notably GrandCentral and Gizmo, to in turn offer Google Voice to the masses. Furthermore, Google’s latest bedfellow is actually a traditional cell phone company, Sprint, in a deal to offer GV number portability to Sprint subscribers. But ultimately, Google is looking to flood the market with its free services to keep competitors at bay while increasing advertising channels and being able to reach out to greater numbers. While Skype is rushing to appear on smartphones everywhere, Google is aiming for deals with cell phone providers so that even “dumb phone” owners can enjoy Google Voice, just like an Android owner.

Nobody really agrees on Skype’s valuation. EBay bought it for $2.6 billion (but later had written it down for $1.7 billion), then sold off for a valuation of $2.75 billion. Analysts offer valuations between $750 million to $1 billion in the low end, and some speculate as high as $3 billion. Maybe this leak is a ploy to drum up some more excitement about Skype?

On its corporate blog Skype officially announced a new record of 30 million simultaneous users. And it still wants you to reach out and touch someone:

A few hours ago, Skype passed a new milestone. There were 30 million people, online on Skype, at the same time.

As we cut the (blue) cake at Skype HQ, it’s a good opportunity to remind you that if there’s someone in your life who doesn’t use Skype, there’s never been a better time to tell them about all the wonderful things you can do – video calling on computers, mobiles and TVs, great value calls to phones, instant messaging, sending filesand more.

All of which helps you do things with the people who matter, even when you’re on the other side of the world – or right next door.

I don’t know about you, but just about everyone I know is a Skype user. There’s nobody else for me to convert.

With all the talk about unified communications, it appears that Skype would be the first to achieve mass adoption, albeit primarily among consumers. That’s not to say its features are not enterprise-ready, however. Skype has added group video and screen sharing — two common utilities popular among workers.

In an UCC world where vendors seem obsessed with interoperability, Skype’s unprecedented popularity is noteworthy because it’s always used proprietary technology. Yet that hasn’t stopped more users from using it. Which vendor today wouldn’t want to sell 30 million seats of its UC product, right?

Also, Skype didn’t have to make a tablet to push sales, either. Chew on that for a while.

I love Skype. It’s no secret that I’m a fan of this communications tool. The software evolved from desktop-only to an app that also resides on your smartphone. Recent feature enhancements include desktop sharing and group video. The company has grown tremendously to a point that it hired a Cisco exec as CEO and plans to IPO this year.

But I also realize that it uses proprietary technology. It is voice-over-IP but it is not an open standard. Now a new open source project dubbed GNU Free Call will attempt to offer everything Skype has and then some: SIP adoption.

That’s a big “and then some”… An excerpt of its goal:

What
Our goal is to make GNU Free Call ubiquitous in a manner and level of usability similar to Skype, that is, usable on all platforms, and directly by the general public for all manner of secure communication between known and anonymous parties, but without requiring a central service provider to register with, without using insecure source secret binary protocols that may have back-doors, and without having network control points of any kind that can be exploited or abused by external parties. By doing so as a self organizing meshed calling network, we further eliminate potential service control points such as through explicit routing peers even if networks are isolated in civil emergencies.

That is quite ambitious, but I have faith in the open source community and will be tracking the project’s progress regularly.

My first VoiceCon in 2010 was so much fun (oh yeah, I also learned a lot and made quite a few new acquaintances) that I knew I had to plan for Enterprise Connect 2011. It was also my first live on-site coverage for insideCTI (I’d just started the blog a month earlier), so I really didn’t know what to expect. In 2010 my family tagged along for the 8-hour road trip to Orlando to provide moral support (in the form of “We get to visit Mickey!”) and endured a few days of hotel stay with me, away from the comfort of our TV, sofas, and beds. I would go to the conference during the day, return to the hotel for a “home” cooked supper, then start organizing my notes in order to start burning the midnight oil on the blog. Thankfully the hotel WiFi offered decent speeds.

This year I flied solo, road trip and all. Driving myself for eight hours down Interstate 75 was rough — the various segments of road work made it worse — and again I was reminded that I’m not in college anymore. Still, I think eight hours was about the threshold before I’d gladly subject myself to TSA groping. Had the conference been held in Miami then the TSA would’ve had me by my… Well, you get the idea.

The Gaylord Palms Resort (commonly known as the “biodome” to returning conference goers) hadn’t changed much: the same lush plants, the humidity, the bored alligators, and lots of Avaya banners. Yep, no doubt I had arrived at the right conference when I walked in early Monday morning to pick up my media badge.

Before the trip I’d thought that Skype would be the most talked about exhibitor (and David Gurle, VP Skype Enterprise, also a featured keynote speaker). After all, everybody Skypes these days. And that’s both at home and in the office, both audio and video. Skype’s intention of moving into the enterprise market is also well known now. Some may even say that Skype’s one of the first unified communication applications.

But frankly Skype Enterprise didn’t have anything spectacular for this conference. A partnership with Citrix GoToMeeting, a pitch of 24/7 support tied to SLAs, and a closer relationship with Avaya (a sibling company also sharing Silver Lake Partners as an investor). Disappointedly, nothing too exciting, especially when details were hard to come by too. Was it being overly conservative and cautious because of the planned IPO this year?

The debut of the Innovation Showcase was awesome. Not only did I get to learn about new companies (ProtonMedia, Radish Systems, harmon.ie), but Fonolo was one of the winners and I got to catch up with CEO Shai Berger. I hope the showcase becomes a regular part of Enterprise Connect (and winning companies granted better booth locales).

Speaking of innovation, I was introduced to Hookflash CEO Trent Johnsen whose company came in second in the recent StartupCamp 3 in Miami. Always a pleasure to meet a tech entrepreneur outside of Silicon Valley (he’s from Calgary, Canada).

The always professionally dressed and equally professionally equipped Dan York, Director of Communications at Voxeo, was kind enough to meet with me to chat about his company and the conference in general. Too bad he didn’t divulge any juicy news about possible acquisitions, but he did touch upon some things such as Voxeo’s new office, growth in its Beijing office, and a new data center in Asia. He also wondered why Google or Apple — two companies representing Android and iOS, respectively — weren’t represented at any of the sessions discussing UC mobility. I shared that same sentiment. I eagerly await the year when either of those companies shows up at Enterprise Connect…

Data networking giant Cisco proved it’s not just a one trick pony with SocialMiner winning Best of Enterprise Connect 2011. This social customer care solution monitors social media networks and lets a company effectively respond to customers. (Side note: Avaya also has a similar product called the Social Media Manager, and compared to SocialMiner the UX was night and day.)

The highlight of the trip was probably the invitation-only media dinner hosted by Verizon on Monday, at a steakhouse inside the biodome. The dinner was great (had the buffalo steak and bread pudding for dessert), but even better was the opportunity to chat with folks from Verizon and Cisco, not just about UCCaaS but really having regular conversations at the dinner table. Alas, it’s good to know that marketing people are humans too and not androids programmed to divulge only corporate press releases.

Was there a low point? Unfortunately, yes. If anyone found a VirginMobile MiFi hotspot, please return it to me. It’s a blogger’s best friend and I’d lost it sometime on Tuesday, March 1.

But overall, I had a blast this year. Although I didn’t do much liveblogging (I do love liveblogging though) this time, my tweet stream was fairly consistent during the events I attended. And kudos to the good WiFi coverage at the venue this year, most of the time my iPhone 4 was able to last till the end of the day even with heavy tweeting. In fact, lots of people participated in #enterprisecon (I hope Dan’s thumbs are okay) and it made the conference even better!

Enterprise Connect 2012 is March 26-29 at the same biodome. What will next year’s hot topics be? (Please, not interoperability…)

Avaya again is a Diamond Sponsor this year. In fact, turn your head in any direction in any location in the convention center and you’ll likely see a scarlet banner, be it about the Flare or something else. The walkway to the Enterprise Connect floor has Avaya signs decked out on both sides, plus a couple of giant LCDs repeatedly playing a promo video of the Flare experience. I’m dubbing that place “The Sacred Avaya Hall.” The only thing missing are marketing people standing alongside the hall chanting in unison “Flaaare, Flaaaaaare, Flaaaaaaaaaaaaaaare” as you walk by.

Flaaare, Flaaaaaaaare, Flaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaare

As much as Flare is getting most of the publicity here, Deb Kline (Sr. Manager, PR), Tara Mahoney (General Manager, ACE) and Jorge Blanco (VP Product Marketing) stayed grounded in my briefing. Because of the timing of our meeting, we weren’t able to visit the Avaya pavilion for any demos. Instead we huddled inside a room, around a conference table, where they showed me how Avaya fights “CTI fatigue” plaguing companies.

First, a core dedication to SIP. This is the foundation of everything Avaya does these days. No SIP, no talk. Aura is the underlying communications platform to extend into SIP in order to support UC and contact center solutions.

Next, advocate Web services when dealing with interfaces. This means publishing APIs that are RESTful and standardized. In today’s world everybody knows how to deal with the Web, right? The company has a product with a catchy name — Agile Communication Environment, or ACE — to address this. This layer provides the hooks into third party solutions and enables developers to customize interfaces. Blanco aptly described this approach as one with the least disruption to the enterprise.

So with all these commitments to openness and transparency, why hasn’t Avaya joined the UCIF? My question didn’t draw out many comments about this forum, except that Avaya’s still in a holding pattern to see how things develop. But it isn’t the only major company in the waiting room — Cisco and IBM have yet to endorse the cause with their membership, either.

Avaya booth at Enterprise Connect 2011

Avaya’s developer-friendly open strategy has produced fruitful results such as enabling SkypeConnect to latch onto Avaya Aura. Skype and Avaya’s love affair will create a market force worth attention. Skype and Avaya also share some private equity DNA, so having them both at the show almost seems like them ganging up on others.

Is it a fair fight? Well, all’s fair in love and UC.

Although most of time this blog covers enterprise communications, there were some interesting stuff out of CES 2011 that may be of interest to readers.

One of the biggest and surprising news came from Skype, and CEO Tony Bates was in the Las Vegas Convention Center to deliver it live: the acquisition of Qik. Mobile video, group video calling, and the new SkypeKit SDK were also highlighted by Bates on stage. All part of the company’s ramp-up to an IPO this year.

On the other hand, VOIP provider Ooma chose to focus solely on consumer voice telephony. It has a good-looking and robust product, but there are no plans to target the video business at all.

And how about that sexy tablet called the BlackBerry PlayBook? RIM booked a pavilion at CES to show the world that it’s serious about the tablet — and it’s not an Android.

More CES 2011 coverage is available on gagagadget — don’t forget to check out the YouTube channel and Flickr group!

We all know that Skype is readying a 2011 IPO, and TechCrunch has uncovered what appears to be a hiring frenzy at the VOIP company for cloud and Web engineers:

We spotted these job postings on Skype’s website, indicating that the company is looking to build a team of cloud and web technology engineers. According to the postings, these staff members will “build an infrastructure capable of supporting hundreds of millions of users.” The products, will deliver “voice, video, chat and presence” to the web and “enable radically new Skype applications.”

A source with knowledge of the matter has confirmed that Skype is indeed building a team to work on cloud products and will be launching a number of web-based applications in the near future.

This area is where Google reigns as it was able to roll out Google Voice and later integrate it within Gmail seamlessly. A cloud-based Skype would surely attract more consumers because the Web is so accessible, but it’s also clear that Skype aims to lure enterprise customers with the collective power and scalability of the cloud.

The question is, How many Google and Cisco engineers will Skype be able to poach?

This week, of course, has been mainly about ITEXPO West and StartupCamp.

Guest blogger John Stepp of Free Tech Consultants attended the Avaya event on Sunday evening and got a real close look at the famed Avaya Flare video device (a fancy way to say Avaya-made Android tablet). Check out the video of Avaya VP Christian von Reventlow showing off the device.

StartupCamp Comm Edition coverage on Monday night was covered by gagagadget writer Grant Roe as cross posts. Reports for the night and the first presenting company, AdelaVoice, are here and here. I’ve been told that more posts will come so stay tuned…

This week we also all learned about what Cisco was up to with Skype, or vice versa. Evidently it wasn’t about an acquisition. Well, sort of — Skype’s “acquisition” of Cisco SVP Tony Bates. Skype’s just lining up the ducks to ready an IPO…

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