Item: Skype
Rating: 10
Author: Chris Whisonant

Overall Satisfaction with Skype

Use Cases and Deployment Scope

In our small company, we use Skype primarily for instant messaging functionality and team calls. It's cross-platform availability, including mobile, definitely makes using it a no-brainer. It keeps us from having to maintain our own IM infrastructure.

Pros and Cons

Pros

Maintaining and allowing searching of chat history.
Group conversations that are persistent and that can be easily extended to those outside of the organization.
Audio and video calls are rock solid!

Cons

Some areas of the chat interface take up a little too much space.

Return on Investment

Being able to instantly chat with a colleague had helped us be able to respond to customer questions with speed.
Without having to maintain an infrastructure, our consultants can focus more on customer solutions.
Prevents the need for any capital investments in infrastructure or other services to meed our needs.

Alternatives Considered

IBM Sametime

We are a consulting firm that implements and recommends IBM Sametime for our customers. However, we use Skype internally due to not having to maintain an investment in hardware/networking/etc... to provide IM capabilities to our team. IBM Sametime, as an on-premises or cloud-based solution, is wonderful and provides customers with more security and control.

Other Software Used

IBM Notes, GoToMeeting

Likelihood to Recommend

For the small business, Skype offers great freedom with being able to communicate with your team and others and it is always accessible. Generally, we don't have to worry about using Skype due to how solid it is at providing the communication needs that we require.

Skype Feature Ratings

Comments

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Skype is a life-saver for small business communications needs!