Skype For The Enterprise Concerning?

Skype Looking For Beta-testers For Their Enterprise Offering

Skype announced yesterday that they are looking for companies with a 1,000 or more employees to test an enterprise class version of Skype. According to the release, Skype Enterpirse Edition has all of the standard Skype features, in addition to:

• Enterprise Network Compatibility
• Company-owned Skype Name Creation
• Customisable to Corporate Requirements
• Direct Skype Technical Support
• Maintenance

Although this sounds like an excellent proposition, I wonder about the load that using Skype will take on an enterprise level data network, especially one that, presumably, was built to only handle PC related traffic. While it seems that Skype *may* have built some sort of technology into the enterprise client to alleviate this concern via their “enterprise network compatibility”, I know of 50-100 person companies that use Skype, who struggle with issues related to to voice/video calling on their PC data network.

If the load can not be adequetely handled by the enterprise network, it is fairly certain that latency, jitter, and packet loss will occur resulting in a less than favorable calling experience, and more than likely poor results from the Skype for enterprise program.