The future of Skype in the world of standardized VoIP

I read a while ago an opinion stating that there is no need anymore for standards - people choose their proprietary way of communication by installing a given application on their desktop or mobile device - be it Skype or one of the other services out there. I disagree with this view.

Proprietary solutions definitely have room in our world. If you take telecommunication, the first thing that comes to mind is Skype. They are based on a proprietary protocol, they own it, they run the network, they provide the endpoints. And everyone uses them.

The reason for Skype’s success was due to its ease of use - something that was possible because it was able to work from behind firewalls without any hassles for the users and due to the fact that Skype owned the network. These two aspects were non-existent at the time for standardized solutions that were based on either SIP or H.323.

Things are now changing. You have firewall and NAT traversal solutions available for the standardized protocols and there are vendors who provide the needed infrastructure on the server side.

So what’s new about it? I just came across an interesting post over at Pragmatic Marketing on Proprietary versus Standard. The following sentence summarizes the point:

In The Innovators Solution, Clayton Christenson argues that you must switch from proprietary to standard when “good enough” becomes available.

Phil Wolff from Skype Journal summarizes an interview with Skype indicating that they don’t see VoIP interoperability in their roadmap. Putting these two pieces together - in the near future, the standards for VoIP will become “good enough” and will force proprietary solution like Skype to interwork with them or fade away.