Skype, Salesforce.com Make Telecommunicatons Acquisitions

Skype and Salesforce.com generated telecommunications chatter late last week, with both announcing acquisitions: Skype acquired video messaging vendor Qik, while Salesforce.com paid $31 million for DimDim, which specializes in presence and communications. If that’s not enough, Skype built additional buzz around itself by launching group video calling for enterprises.

Let’s take a closer look at Skype’s news first. Qik, founded in 2006, specializes in software to capture video and share it with anyone, whether they’re mobile or on the desktop, according to the press release. That means Skype’s video teleconferencing offering is about to get the ability to record, store, and share video — natively. It may not sound like much, but it’s a nice value add for Skype’s channel partners.

And speaking of value adds, Skype now supports group video calling with business subscriptions starting at $6.99 per month, according to a different press release. The caveat is that they’re selling subscriptions through Skype Manager in 3- or 12- month blocks. Up to 10 total callers can connect and get in a little (sorry, Apple) face time. I believe it’s another blow to the Cisco Umi low-cost consumer telepresence model, since Skype’s doing it cheaper and on the desktop.

Salesforce’s acquisition of DimDim, on the other hand, is designed to extend real-time communication to the Salesforce Chatter enterprise social platform. The company’s Facebook envy is apparent, as the social network is mentioned no less than eight times in the official release. But it promises enterprise-grade features like presence, screen-sharing, and teleconferencing in addition to the instant messaging.

No doubt, unified communications is heating up in 2011. Watch TalkinCloud for updates.

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