skype needs to swallow microsoft

 Posted by on May 9, 2011 at 23:45  mobile, telepresence, video calling, video conferencing  2 Responses »
May 092011
 

Microsoft was dead without mobile, barely at the table. Skype means Microsoft is now all in. Can they take the table? Only if Skype swallows Microsoft.

According to the WSJ, MSFT will buy Skype for over $7 billion. I’ve blogged before about Skype preparing to lead the disruption of enterprise communications and video. Well, consider it disrupted. Of course, Skype will likely be done disrupting, but I suppose they did their job.

I don’t this MSFT paid over $7B to play defense, cannibalize/extend Lync, gain residential voice, strengthen SMB or add to their unified communications story. No, I think this is about mobile, especially mobile video.

MSFT is dead without mobile. So they bet large on Nokia and now double down to the tune of $7B+ with Skype, and they’ll likely bet more. Great moves? No, but the Microsoft hand is forced. Play big or go home. Now Skype needs to swallow MSFT.

[updates with numbers] Why does Skype need to swallow MSFT? Skype has 170 million users, growing at a 40% rate. Skype has 80-100 million active users (my estimate). None of those users are anchored by a specific pipe provider or platform provider. This makes Skype the only widely deployed carrier independent, platform independent communications solution in the world. If Skype can maintain that, if Skype can swallow MSFT to the degree that they can continue to independently innovate and disrupt, then MSFT wins. Wins big.

More likely we’ll get three mobile islands, especially for mobile video. Apple iOS/Facetime, Android/Google Video, Windows Phone/Skype. Big islands – mobile video, voice, IM, presence. Even if MSFT does that – turns the big two (Apple, Google) into the big two – then that’s worth the price as well.

Unfortunately for Microsoft and Skype, they will have to execute flawlessly – almost unheard of for an acquisition of this magnitude from a company of MSFT’s size. Skype would have to swallow MSFT, in this specific space, rather than the usual Borg effect we see in M&A like this.

    purple video and distance independent interaction

     Posted by on February 9, 2011 at 10:51  telepresence, video calling, video conferencing  4 Responses »
    Feb 092011
     

    Video is the new voice. Great marketing terminology but for now the marketing cart is ahead of the horse (although the immense marketing and sales muscle behind Cisco telepresence has been enough to convince some not to worry about where the horse is). But the good news is video can be better than the new voice; it can be a critical part of the new converged, multi-modality communications/applications world.

    Jeff Pulver, VoIP evangelist extraordinaire, coined the “purple minutes” term as a way to describe the use of voice to spawn, extend and enrich other apps, and using other apps to extend voice usages. Purple minutes were important for VoIP such that VoIP wouldn’t “just” enable cheaper phone calls, it would enable a more robust voice experience, meaning VoIP would disrupt both business/cost models and user experience. For video, purple video sessions are analogous to purple VoIP minutes, and the session can leverage multiple voice, video and data services and apps.

    Video – especially telepresence quality video – is paradigm changing in that it facilitates distance independent interaction. This is a hard concept to grasp unless you actually experience telepresence – telepresence is not just better video chat or improved enterprise videoconferencing – it is an entirely different experience that is not quantified in terms of pixels, bandwidth or codec technology. Webcam video and traditional videoconferencing simply add a dimension to voice; telepresence is a separate dimension – one which can be a substitute for face to face and facilitate distance independent interaction.

    There are already extremely interesting use cases for purple video sessions, and most we won’t even identify until video sessions are more pervasive. These purple video use cases apply to both telepresence (immersive) video and non-immersive video, powerful in its own right. On the immersive side, think of purple education applications and purple healthcare applications for a start.

    Before you close this tab and dismiss it as purple pie in the sky gobble gook…this doesn’t mean that all interaction becomes distance independent, or all apps and services incorporate video (this is a non-zero-sum game and these statements aren’t binary). My head is in the clouds but I can still see the ground ; ).

    However, if the video industry (the entire video ecosystem) prioritizes “purple” and executes properly, then it does change the world, and video will be more than just the new voice, video will linchpin deep purple unified communications applications.

    Back to current reality for a second though – right now video calling and telepresence is fairly close to where VoIP (voice over IP) was in the late 90s from a technology perspective – leading or bleeding edge. For me personally, it is eerily similar. Working on video calling interoperability causes flashbacks from trying to get VoIP interoperability working between Cisco, Vocaltec, Clarent and Lucent in the ITXC labs to implementing in production with millions of VoIP minutes per day of customer traffic. Then maintaining the interop through new features, new releases, session border controllers, etc. Buckle up, video world, it is a rough road. But purple video sessions await and they are paradigm disrupting.

      Honeycomb to power Google video calling

       Posted by on February 4, 2011 at 09:32  mobile, telepresence, video calling  No Responses »
      Feb 042011
       

      Google announced this week that Honeycomb (Android 3.0) will support Google video calls from Google Talk. It didn’t get much attention as it was tucked deeply away within Google’s overall Android Honeycomb announcements this week, but this is an important step towards video becoming the new voice.

      Google’s been relatively quiet in video calling, but this is a strong indication that Google is as serious about video calling as their friends at Skype, Apple, Cisco etc. Expect much more from Google in upcoming months, as the Android platform is a critical piece to their overall set of video calling and unified communications weaponry.

      Honeycomb meanwhile is a strong competitor to Apple’s iOS, including the new Chrome web store. We’ll learn more about the user experience and execution when the Motorola Xoom and subsequent Android Honeycomb powered tablets ship, but from a platform perspective Honeycomb is very strong, and I look forward to some Honeycomb powered video calls.

        skype video gets qik – can competitors keep pace?

         Posted by on January 6, 2011 at 16:40  telepresence, video calling  No Responses »
        Jan 062011
         

        Two more Skype video calling announcements at CES: Purchase of Qik (video messaging and wireless optimized streaming); GA of group video calling (after 2010 betas). And last week was Skype video on iPhone.

        Skype is hot. On your mobile (Android next?), in your living room (Skype TV) and soon in your enterprise. 2011 will continue to be mainly video islands, rather than video calling interoperability, but each island is occupied by heavyweights, and they all better be wary of Skype:

        + Cisco has reinvented enterprise video with Cisco telepresence, but Umi (home) has too narrow of a use case to justify the cost and Cisco’s mobile video strategy is still on their whiteboards.

        + The Microsoft/Polycom alliance is strong in the enterprise and has a unified communications story but walls between enterprise, home and mobile are falling and Microsoft/Polycom could get buried in the rubble.

        + The HP/Vidyo pair will be interesting – Vidyo’s SVC implementation is nice – but they don’t have the marketing of the big players above, nor the innovation and reach of Skype.

        + Google video has been quiet but that won’t continue and they have the pieces to compete with anyone on this list.

        A wildcard is M&A. It will happen in this space in 2011. Polycom would be the big story but smaller pieces like Qik could be more significant in the long haul. Microsoft, HP and Google are all likely acquirers. Anyone is fair game on the other side.

          videoconferencing – future from the past

           Posted by on December 18, 2010 at 23:30  telepresence, video calling, video conferencing  No Responses »
          Dec 182010
           

          The general theme of this video calling reinvention is failed technology of the past (videoconferencing) finding success today (video calling and telepresence). Compare netbooks and iPads to their ancestors of the past as another current example.

          Want to predict the future of technology? Look at today’s technology that doesn’t succeed, and consider whether it would succeed in the future as we pass new inflections points in networks, chips and processing. Easier said than done – not sure many folks struggled to setup videoconferencing over ISDN years ago and could have made the leap to the telepresence systems of today – but today’s failures are tomorrow’s successes.

          Video calling and telepresence is a great example. Look at how consumer video calling is heating up. MG Siegler writes that Google’s rumored +1 social service will include videoconferencing services. Skype is already a leader and will likely make interesting announcements leading up to their IPO. Cisco is also playing, with a recently announced retail telepresence product, Umi.

          Enterprise videoconferencing and telepresence is also hot, after it was left for dead. Like Apple in retail, Cisco is using their marketing muscle to reinvent a market segment, instigating the enterprise video calling reinvention with their immersive telepresence products.

          Soon mobile videoconferencing will join the party, and mobile, retail and enteprise videoconferencing and video calling spaces will overlap and conflict. But more on that and on videoconferencing and telepresence in future posts (my job is building telepresence services).