Or instead of engaging in conspiracy theores with zero proof we should look at whats going on here rationally. Skype is really unacceptable in any corporate environment. I don't want a random PC on my network to be a superpeer and suddenly use my 50mbps connection routing calls to the world. Run skype for a couple of mins, fire up tcpview, and watch calls come in and out. Not only is this a waste of my resources it also provides a shit experience of dropped calls, sudden drops in quality, and connection issues. The P2P model for video and talk is suboptimal and MS knows their real customers (IT managers and IT buyers) aren't going to go for this.
I have yet to get high quality video to work on skype, even between two clients each with 10+ mbps lines. MS knows this is a problem.
More than likely Skype will be for SMB and residential use and high end enterprise will continue to use Lync or alternatives. This is a welcome move as it legitimizes Skype for many.
He phrased it like a conspiracy theorist, but it's a little naive to think that intercept capability wasn't a factor in this decision. As far as I know skype was the biggest player in communications that wasn't being completely monitored.
Skype went down for a couple days about a year or two ago, as did a few other voip services at around the same time. I suspect this is more than just a single company that is behind it, rather the US government.
Sure, it's not a secret that the NSA is the one pulling in all of the data they can get their hands on right now. And they absolutely want all skype traffic, since they already have all internet and phone traffic.
The bandwidth the whole Skype swarm can scale to in a matter of minutes will most certainly exceed what would be possible if you're running everything from a datacenter. Sure, have a few backup machines ready to takeover roles if super peers drop or something else is impacting the network.
IT managers and IT buyers are obviously not the target market for Skype. They just buy that stuff from CISCO.
Skype has invested considerable development resources into making P2P work over NAT, circumventing firewalls, cloaking and encrypting their traffic to evade packet inspection. Even the client itself is heavily obfuscated. The point of this all is of course to not threaten the P2P model that has allowed them to essentially scale unlimited.
Now, you have Microsoft replacing that with the standard centralized infrastructure that scales terribly. Huh.
The point with Skype isn't that its doing something a Cisco device won't do, but the fact that its highly ubiquitous. Maybe IT managers aren't the target for Skype, but when a customer or someone else wants to do a Skype VoIP call... you need to use Skype.
Not only is this a waste of my resources it also
provides a shit experience of dropped calls, sudden
drops in quality, and connection issues.
My experience with Skype, by using it everyday, is not at all similar.
Skype for me is the best VoIP system I've ever used. Voice calls work fine even over my phone's 3G connection, which compared to a broadband line is piss poor. Video calls sometime have hiccups, but it worked for me in situations where more traditional client-server solutions were unusable.
I think the problem is that if you have a very fast connection ("10+ mbps lines") then Skype upgrades you to a super-peer and sacrifices your experience in order to route the calls of other Skype users.
I have yet to get high quality video to work on skype, even between two clients each with 10+ mbps lines. MS knows this is a problem.
More than likely Skype will be for SMB and residential use and high end enterprise will continue to use Lync or alternatives. This is a welcome move as it legitimizes Skype for many.