How do you break through to corporate clients?
Durchslag: Historically, Skype has offered the same product to consumers and to businesses. About 25 percent of Skype users are small and medium-sized businesses [3 employees to 250 employees], and we’re looking at starting to offer a more specialized set of business offerings. They [corporate clients] need a business control panel that lets them keep track of credits and what’s being spent by the different employees and to manage access ... So we’re rolling that out.
They need a higher service level. A business can’t just send an e-mail and wait for a response. We’ll offer premium-level service to businesses.
And the third part to be really successful with businesses is you have to have value-added resellers on the ground walking the floors of those companies. We’re looking at building a value-added reseller network through partnerships so they can sell Skype business solutions to their business customers and they can make money by being able to provide that support and day-to-day capabilities.
In the past, Skype was one size fits all, and [now] you’ll see us taking a more segmented offering as we try and take our growth to the next level.
The best recent example is our partnership with Asterisk last month.
They are the leading Linux-based PDS provider, so they will have an offering that connects with Skype networks so people can have a solution in their business that cuts their international calling costs by 80 percent and enables free Skype-to-Skype calls. There’s a big savings opportunity. It’s something worth considering in these difficult economic times.
How does Worldwide Interoperability for Microwave Access (WiMAX) help Skype?
Durchslag: WiMAX is very good for Skype. Our research and users say they want Skype persistently to be with them and it gives more meaning and presence to the capabilities, especially when we look at how to integrate Skype’s presence in desktop [computers] into other devices and to be able to keep that wherever you go.
So we’re looking at WiMAX not just in terms of connectivity to PCs, but we’re also looking at other WiMAX-enabled devices of all sorts and types.
WiMAX is starting to roll out in different countries at different times in the next year or two. We think Skype is one of the killer applications to help accelerate WiMAX adoption and it makes things easier than WiFi because you don’t have all the sign-on issues, and WiMAX has a much broader radius of coverage and better power, which means [high] quality for sustaining video connection.
So we’re really excited about WiMAX and the sooner [it is adopted] the better.
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