Workspace Blog

I’m David Gurlé, vice president and general manager of Skype Enterprise. Today, I’m here at Enterprise Connect 2011 in Orlando, Florida, and I’ve just finished my keynote address about Skype’s game-changing role in doing business, as well as the changing landscape of the enterprise communications ecosystem.

What it comes down to is this. Technology is changing the way we do business. Employees are bringing their own technology into the workplace, mobility is creating a lot more flexibility than ever to be wherever you want to be to get work done, and the advent of cloud-based computing is also breaking down barriers and enabling people to communicate, access information, and be more productive in new and powerful ways. This is the new way of doing things in business.

Skype is helping to lead this shift in the workplace as more and more people are using and adopting Skype for business purposes. Business is about ‘doing’ and ‘doing’ is about collaboration, and that is what Skype is all about. Skype creates connected ecosystems of colleagues, clients, vendors, and partners. We help you overcome the traditional barriers of communication and allow you to access your network of the important people you have real relationships with to get work done.

These are some of the important points I made today at Enterprise Connect, which is an exciting place to be. Skype Enterprise has made some big strides forward over the last year in expanding its enterprise offering. In May 2010, we rolled out Skype Manager, a Web-based management tool that helps businesses harness the power of Skype in an enterprise. At the end of August 2010, we rolled Skype Connect 1.0 out of beta to enable IP-PBX or UC-based systems to connect to Skype. We announced a strategic partnership with Avaya in September 2010. And, most recently, in January 2011, we launched a new Skype Business client for Windows with Group Video Calling.

Today at Enterprise Connect, we took another big step forward by announcing a strategic partnership with Citrix, a global leader in virtual computing and Web collaboration and the provider of one of the most popular, easy-to-use Web conferencing solutions on the market today. We think our business customers will be excited about this because it means toward the end of this year, we will be adding Citrix’s GoToMeeting capabilities to the Skype Enterprise desktop experience. This will further enhance Skype’s collaboration solutions with a variety of new Web conferencing and audio features.

Already, Skype users can experience high-quality and cost-effective instant messaging, voice and video calling, group video calling, file sharing and more. The addition of GoToMeeting capabilities will allow Skype’s business users to quickly set up online meetings with an audio conferencing bridge that enables users to join via Skype or through public switched telephone network (PSTN) phone numbers.

Joining me to talk about this announcement today – Brett Caine, senior vice president and general manager of Citrix’s Online Services Division. Check out this video of us sharing the news:

We know you couldn’t agree more that adding these features to Skype for setting up and joining meetings will be a welcome addition. We are now working on bringing you the most advanced enterprise collaboration tool ever and we can’t wait to share further details with you about the product and its commercial release in the next few months. So, stay tuned.