Skype In Or Out: The Most Expensive VOIP Call In History

So Microsoft’s buying Skype for $8.5 billion?

Man, time flies.  I remember when eBay bought Skype for, well, wasn’t it like $2.5B?

But, that was in the Jurassic era, pre-Facebook, whom, by the way, Om Malik pronounces the winner of Microsoft’s newfound acquisition.

His reasoning?  Facebook gets to keep Skype away from Google and gets access to the Skype assets through Microsoft’s deal.

But Nokia also benefits after Microsoft’s recent deal with them to put Windows Mobile 7 into Nokia smartphones as their OS of choice moving forward.

Of course, you also will now see Skype moving into the X-Box, Kinect, Sharepoint, Outlook…the list goes on.

Marshall Kirkpatrick at ReadWriteWeb points out, though, that Mac Fanboys will likely continue to get the short end of the Skype stick, as “neglect of the Mac version has always been an issue.”

He points out that Skype for Mac has been “several versions behind the Windows version for years” and lags in features, and that it would be hard to imagine that changing with this deal.

Regardless, one would hope the folks in Redmond just don’t treat Skype like the red-headed stepchild it seemed to be at e-Bay.

Considering its Microsoft’s most expensive acquisition ever (aQuantive went for $6B in 2007), I would think they’d want to make the most of it, although keeping all that talent around will require some nice velvety handcuffs.

$8.5B, though — that’s got to be the single most expensive VOIP call in the history of the planet!

How Now Brown Cloud

Yesterday, IBM announced some additions and enhancements to its LotusLive cloud collaboration tools family, including the ability to access UPS shipping functions from within the product.

LotusLive delivers cloud-based, integrated email, Web conferencing, social networking and collaboration services to simplify and improve daily business interactions with customers, partners and colleagues.

Though you won’t get that cool looking guy from the UPS TV commercials – you know, the one where he makes it all seem so simple while drawing at the whiteboard – what you will get is the ability to get quick access to UPS shipping details directly from your LotusLive dashboard.

UPS serves more than 200 countries and territories worldwide; this solution places the ubiquitous UPS shipping services at the fingertips of LotusLive business users.

IBM also announced additional language support (15 languages, including the addition of Danish, Finnish, Norwegian and Swedish, and adding to the current availability of Brazilian Portuguese, Dutch, English, French, German, Italian, Japanese, Korean, Simplified Chinese, Spanish and Traditional Chinese) and other new integrated services from Skype, Salesforce.com, and Silanis.

Skype, E-Signature Services, $7 A Month Per User

With the LotusLive Engage for Salesforce CRM integration, customers can take advantage of LotusLive Meetings, Files, and Activities to collaborate with colleagues around the world from within Salesforce CRM.

Silanis e-SignLive e-signature services enables people from multiple organizations to use LotusLive to easily participate in a fully electronic signing process, helping to complete business transactions and legal contracts faster, more efficiently and with fewer errors.

This partnership will expand the potential reach of LotusLive to the world’s largest insurance and financial services companies, government agencies, integrators and service providers that trust Silanis to move their business processes online.

As an example, Signature Mortgage Corporation, a beta customer for Silanis e-SignLive, is enabling clients to complete and sign mortgage applications using the combined Silanis e-SignLive and LotusLive solution. This will help to improve customer experience and retention at Signature Mortgage Corporation, as well as enable the 10-person mortgage consulting team out of Canton, Ohio to compete in a market where low rates alone aren’t enough to win new business.

LotusLive users can now also use Skype to make voice calls via a simple click of a LotusLive contact’s Skype name or phone number. Millions of individuals and businesses use Skype to make free voice calls, send instant messages and share files with other Skype users — and now, LotusLive users can have convenient access to these same global communications tools right from within LotusLive.

These partner integrations from LotusLive help people work the way they want to work, demonstrate the power of the open Web and showcase the power of the cloud – allowing people from any company to easily come together to get business done. For more information on these integrations, please visit here.

Available now, businesses can purchase a new bundle of secure, enterprise-grade cloud email and social networking for only $7 USD per user, per month. 

Combining the capabilities of LotusLive iNotes and LotusLive Connections, the bundle provides essential email, file store and share, activity management, instant messaging and social networking services to enable businesses to work with anyone from anywhere and is available today at www.lotuslive.com/bundle.

A no-cost, 30-day trial in these languages is available at www.lotuslive.com/compare.  To see these new capabilities in action, you can watch the demo below.

For information on the IBM LotusLive Partner Program — including a no-cost, 365-day demo account for IBM business partners – visit www.lotuslive.com/businesspartners.