I dropped by the Pika Technologies labs in Kanata yesterday to get a look at Pika Connect for Skype. Field trials started yesterday, and I wanted to see what the fuss was about.  Pika’s core business is selling boards, and a software layer, to allow companies to create PC based telephony solutions. They’ve recently been adding support for software only systems to that layer, and yesterday unveiled their Skype support.Â
What I saw was a Skype user ID routing calls into Asterisk, to IVRs, ordinary Asterisk extensions, conference rooms and so on. What that means is that businesses running Asterisk (think EBay sellers), can publish a Skype ID as well as an ordinary phone number, and Skype users will come in through the standard phone system — CRM and all. In fact, the system is so smart, that it will pluck the Skype users telephone number from their profile, and present that as caller ID, so that the CRM system simply sees a Skype customer like any other kind of customer.
Pika has created a practical gateway from Skype to the PSTN which doesn’t require you to buy Skype-Out minutes. More importantly, they’ve built a platform for bringing Skype to enterprise telephony applications.
Waaaaay cool!Â
Check out the whitepaper online. And, if you’re at the EBay DevCon next week, I understand folks from Pika will be there too.Â
Alec Saunders is the Vice President of Developer Relations for BlackBerry make Research in Motion. This is his personal blog, with his personal viewpoints. Prior to this Alec was the CEO and co-founder of Calliflower — the easiest way to hold a meeting, online, on a conference call, or on the go. A double-decade veteran of product management and marketing, he spent nine years at Microsoft where he helped launch Windows 95, the first two versions of Internet Explorer, the Universal Plug and Play initiative, the push into home markets, opt-in email marketing and what might well go down in history as the very first direct email list ever.
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take a look at: http://www.qoollabs.com/ they make much more
Interesting stuff. Others have done the same, previously, on a smaller (single user) basis and have linked these adapters to Asterisk:
UpLink http://www.nch.com.au/skypetosip/index.html
RSDevs PSGW http://www.rsdevs.com/psgw.shtml
RSDevs has been promising a "multi-user" gateway for a while, but that is probably vaporware. UpLink is a very slick package, but for Windows. I'd be interested to see a more detailed description of how the Pika software actually works – their docs are a bit on the vague side as to the actual functions and components, but that is pretty much the case for everyone's Skype gateway product, because when you get down to it, they're all just layers on Skype's API and a modified sound driver glue on the Windows side.
Just goes to show the strategy decay that these telco companies are getting into… let the new communications age come – less att, less verizon… GO SKYPE!!!. If anyone wants to learn more about business phone systems, check out:
http://www.businesstelecombuyer.com
They have unbiased advice, news, and they give you competitive price quotes from a bunch of dealers.
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