Hi Christina – you’re speaking my language. I own and run four or so small businesses (I lose count sometimes) spanning manufacturing to property to consulting to wholesale.

The interesting thing for me is that one of those businesses (the manufacturing one) is 20 years old and hence has a bunch of legacy on-premise systems. It’s a company that manufactures backpacks and outdoor clothing and sells direct all around the world as well as through retail outlets. Those legacy systems are a major barrier for us – as a simple example, our e-commerce solution is disconnected from our accounting solution which has no relationship with our manufacturing solution and so on – the double up and inefficiencies caused by this are amazing.

Another one of my businesses is a consulting organization. It has the benefit of being formed post the advent of the cloud and hence enjoys the amazing benefits that having connected applications, anywhere access, and instant scalability can bring. So in terms of what rocks my world….

1) Backup and sync – the flavor doesn’t matter (FWIW I use both DropBox and Syncplicity). But the ability to know that my documents and files are available on my 4 or so laptops, my 2 tablets and my mobile phone… well that’s super valuable. The ability to invite people to collaborate on a file, or to grant third party access to a file while on the road is super

2) Documents – first a big admission. I still use MS office for some things (but not many). However for simple document creation, editing and collaboration, Google docs is cheap, reliable and simple

3) Travel apps – I do a lot of travel – a little application like TripIt keep central record of all of my flights, hotel bookings etc. It notifies me (over the cloud of course) if flights are delayed and even offers up suggestions of alternative modes of transport – all for a few dollars a month

4) Scheduling – I live in New Zealand, travel to Australia a dozen times a year or so, collaborate mainly with US colleagues and run a Pacific time zone. I’m generally working across at least three timezones and trying to sort my schedule into an extensive travel calendar. I use Tungle.me to allow people to schedule time for interviews, briefings or time with the kids (that last one was a joke). It’s perhaps a little buggy but still very useful

5) Skype – now so pervasive that no one really thinks of it as a cloud solution, Skype is perhaps the quintessentially cloud offering. I’d say that around 80% of my voice communications happen through Skype (or sometimes the Google equivalent, Google talk). It saves me huge amounts of money on toll calls, and integrated IM and desktop sharing make for a great platform for product briefings.

6) Accounting – call me a geek, but the ability to check my bank account and the state of my accounts receivable while sitting in a Felucca travelling down the Nile is seriously useful. I work remotely and generally take at least a month off in summer to go travelling with the family. The great thing about the cloud is that while travelling I can still be working. I run my businesses primarily on top of Xero, an accounting application from my own home country of New Zealand

7) The bits and pieces – so many little tools that I use from time to time – Evernote as a hyper-accessible notebook. Zendesk as a helpdesk offering for a couple of businesses I’m involved with. Zoho for email, calendaring and documents. Box.net for document sharing. SlideRocket and Prezi for presentations… the list goes on and on

Cloud is amazing. Yes I get paid money to say the cloud is amazing, but the key for me is that there’s no way I’d be able to do what I do without the cloud – it truly enables my world!

However Skype does not equal a phoneline. This was bought home to me the other day when I read that Skype has been ordered by the UK Office of Communications to allow emergency calls over their network.

Skype has refused – but before the incredulity starts, there are some good reasons for this. Skype came out strongly saying that;

At this time, Skype is not complying with Ofcom’s ruling, as we believe that it is not applicable to our software offering and in fact potentially harmful to public safety

The problem Skype has is that, unlike a landline or a mobile, Skype is not location aware – or to use an example I have Skype on my laptop – if I were to call an emergency number from it and then hang up – Skype has no way of knowing if I’m at home, at work or overseas – location awareness is a key requirement for emergency services call takers.

On their emergency services information page Skype says that;

An emergency call is perhaps the most important call you will ever make. We care about your safety and want to provide you with complete information about emergency services.

• Skype is not a replacement for your landline or your mobile phone. Skype does not offer you the ability to call emergency services for help if you are in distress.
• When calling 911 for help, mobile phones can identify your location within a 300 meter range and sometimes even closer. This enables emergency service operators to find you or call you back if the call drops. Landline phones will dispatch help to the address you provided when you subscribed to use the phone company’s services.
• If you are a SkypePro or SkypeIn subscriber, using your mobile or landline phone for emergency calls is still required since Skype does not know your physical location and is unable to assist emergency services.

Ofcon knows this (or should) and needs to see why their order is in fact counter to public safety interests. The question is what should Skype do? And how much of a risk are these sorts of issues going to be going into the future.

Related articles by Zemanta

• Skype refuses to comply with 999 ruling
• VoIP order to allow 999 calls and give caller location
• Landlines Are A Waste (Almost)

It seems Unilever is realising that the college graduates they’re trying to attract simply cannot function within a rigidly locked-down IT infrastructure, where outside-the-firewall IM, social networking sites and the like are banned.

It reminds me of a conversation I had a few months ago with a friend who then worked within a large IT business in New Zealand. I suggested we chat on Skype – he laughed at me, incredulous that I’d even consider that Skype would be allowed within his organisation (you know who you are ).

Apparently though Unilever’s CTO Chris Turner realised this level of control would become increasingly difficult to maintain if they wanted to attract new hires. He therefore created "consumerization architect" roles within the organisation tasked with "get[ting] involved in trying to make a difference." These consumerization architects are charged with spreading the use of popular—and in many cases free—technology.

As an example they are looking into letting employees install webcams so they can confer by videoconference and cut down on travel time. (Which shows that they’re only five years or so behind the times).

Unilever is still testing how to give employees more digital freedom. It may move users outside the corporate firewall and allow them to connect via their own computers, provided they’re using certain security technologies. Anecdotal evidence suggests that the savings could be millions of dollars. "We see this as a real opportunity to start altering the cost model to deliver IT" says Turner.

A great example of what this can mean in practice comes from the Xero update which came out today. Xero now allows a couple of interesting features;

Click to (Skype) call

Unified Communications (UC) is the way of the future. Imagine being able to click to call, to SMS or to Skype from within your application. Xero has gone half way there with the roll out of click to Skype functionality. Of course it only works when the receiving party has Skype – and it’s be nice to see some functionality for IM or traditional calling – but it’s a step very much in the right direction.

Contact Links

Xero also added the ability to build own custom links to a CRM system directly from within the app.  Users can set up Contact Links under their Organisation settings. Xero has also created a link builder that reportedly makes it easy to match contact fields inside Xero to other systems.

It’s good to see some of the network, and networked effects coming through from Xero – still a long way to go but they’re getting there

The new Skype is all about building up a user’s networks, support is included for importing contacts from a number of installed and web email apps.

The UI might shock a few hardened users, used to seeing the rather minimalist current look, but in order to maximise video functionality, Skype had to command more monitor real estate.

With most Telco’s already offering, or soon to introduce, VoIP offerings, Skype needs to up the anti in terms of functionality. This beta release takes yet another broadside at another of the incumbents high value revenue streams – namely video conferencing. The Telco’s must hate Skype – first P2P VoIP ate POTS lunch and now they’re looking at big ticket stuff – disruption hurts!

The beta release will be available here tomorrow.

• Sync Address book contacts over the air
• Ensure that IM messages work seamlessly with SMS
• Windows Live Messenger contacts get local numbers
• Voice calls from Messenger on PC to mobiles
• Give some sort of presence verification

Mary Jo got down with some hyperbole, saying that this was an attempt by Microsoft to eliminate phone numbers (in her defence she was direct quoting Bill Gates). Zoli returned with a well reasoned retort saying that Echoes, rather than eliminating phone numbers, simply makes it more convenient for people to use them. He also touched on the fact that these services are already offered (in part or in full) by a number of other players.

And therein lies the rub – for unified communications to be, well unified, it needs to be all inclusive – MS Echoes lock-in plus Skype lock-in plus Grandcentral lock-in does not equal unification by any measure I’m comfortable with.

No what is really needed is for a third party to offer the unification service, achieve buy in from all the various players and look, act and feel neutral.

So, whereto for Echoes? Well it is an MS product, MS have some serious relationships with the telcos so there is every chance that it will work. Whether or not it should of course is another discussion. In any case, and for the current and ex-pat antipodeans out there, I leave you with another Echo – one firmly emanating from the eighties.

A couple of posts today (Om Malik and a follow up on Skype Journal) discuss a rumoured Skype killing application that is allegedly being planned for. It seems that some of the Telco heavyweights want to build a VoIP based P2P calling service in order to stunt the success of Skype. Those providers in the consortium won’t charge interconnection (on net) calls, but if you call another carrier’s number (and I’d hazard a guess here) or even a POTS number within the providers number pool, you’ll get charged (like Skype out).

It’s a good strategy that has been successful before. The basics are that you enter an adjacent market, tank the revenue pool in that market to such an extent that the incumbent (Skype in this instance) has no resources left to enter your market because it’s fighting for its life in its home market.

Great plan except for a couple of things fella’s.
Firstly Skype’s disrupting you!, secondly you can’t tank what is already free, and thirdly Skype is already in your market (the oops too late moment!).
Apart from the problems with the strategy, I see a bunch of implementation issues with this the approach

1. Can these Telco’s work together
2. Can they get a value proposition that isn’t “old Telco” going at the same time as “Telco 2.0” – BT is a strong advocate of the “Protect and Grow legacy revenues”. How will this fly?
3. Can they suffer the cultural change of not charging for calling?
4. Can they physically build it
5. Who will buy it? – only ray of hope is that they have financial security that Vonage etal don’t. They have a long way to go here. Skype’s adding 360 000 subscribers a day. That’s growth no Telco except China or India has dealt with ever.
6. Can they sell it? Big step change for a sales teams

Thoughts on this anyone? Smacks of desperation to me.