Information Week Says Skype and Avaya Are Talking Enterprise Market

When the news gets slow around the holidays you can always expect the rumor mill to be running at full tilt around the household company names.

Well, I don’t think this is a rumor at all

when I read that Skype and Avaya are in talks to bring Skype into the enterprise. One reason is back on September 9 when the ShoreTel relationship with Skype was announced I wrote:

2) Second-Silver Lake Partners which just bought Skype is also a big player in Avaya so I expect Avaya to be the SME player in the mix. Avaya already embraces SIP and has a very strong understanding of softphones. Case in point, it was Avaya and Cisco which were the first to have their capability put on Nokia E series devices so the phone could be used as an extension of the PBX. To me, given the all in the family status I would expect Avaya to be one of the next ones out the door.

The Information Week story cites exactly those points. Add to the fact that Skype already has their Cisco SIP interop done (which I also forecasted)

3) Third-Cisco. It’s way too logical. Cisco’s ex VP Mike Volpi is part of the Index Ventures group that was in on the buying of Skype from eBay and has very strong relationships at his old company where he was once rumored to being groomed for the top job when John Chambers retires. No one knows the intersections of IP communications and impact on network growth better than he from outside Cisco, and Skype means more packets, especially video so for Cisco to embrace Skype in my mind is a no brainer. What’s more I would not be surprised to find out that Skype and Cisco develop telepresence light using Skype Video one day.

Add to it that Skype now has Jonathan Rosenberg (ex-Cisco, ex founder Dynamicsoft) on board so the business VoIP stars are lining up very well in their direction, with more to come in 2010, likely in the on-premise small box PBX market or with Polycom and others. The market is just getting ripe and ready for Skype not to have a major stake in it. Rosenberg is one of the core fathers of SIP dating back to his Columbia University days and is perhaps the foremost authority today who is part of an an active telecom company.

When you add all that up, it’s easy to see Skype as a winner.

Oh, and the losers? Microsoft and AT&T.