er or other trace tool lets you see,” says Kevin Tolly. “The way Skype has chosen to do things, those signs aren’t there, so it’s a bit of a challenge to recognize its fingerprint and stop it.”

“It’s been made clear to Skype that there are a lot of people out there ‘who would like to be enlightened’... in terms of what’s going on. And we don’t see that,” adds Tolly.

NewHeights Software Corporation ( http://newheights.com), which develops next-gen software clients for carriers, softswitch vendors and CPE vendors, says that “In the carrier community our offering is sometimes referred to as enterprise Skype or the ‘Skype antidote’.”

SessionSuite IP Telephony–Enterprise Edition from BlueNote Networks, Inc. ( http://bluenotenetworks.com) is a software-based system, “so enterprises can have their own Skype-like service for their employees, but unlike Skype, this is owned, managed and controlled by the enterprise,” says Sally Bament, VP of Marketing at BlueNote. “We’re SIP based.”

Unlike an IP PBX, Bament notes, “This is purely software, running on Linux, so we can be viewed as another data center application. And unlike Cisco or other companies, we don’t require VPNs.”

Not surprisingly, there are near-direct competitive offerings to Skype that work with standard SIP clients, and have ser-vice-owned servers rather than the P2P leverage-user-resources approach–and will interconnect to other VoIP offerings. For example, there’s Project Gizmo ( www.gizmoproject.com) from Michael Robertson, who brought us MP3.com and Linspire. While Skype has an impressive installed base, Internet history shows that compelling competition can catch up on downloads and user adoption in, well, Internet time frames.

Lastly, Skype’s identity may prove a limiting factor.

How Do You Sustain a Phenomenon?

With lots of users and big bucks already garnered, what’s next for Skype?

“Year One was opening up this easy and simple P2P system that allows free voice calls over the web, and Year Two was layering premium services on top of this, like In, Out and Voice mail,” says Skype’s Saul Klein. “Year Three–this year–we see being about trends, growing the platform and ecosystem, the hardware and software partnerships, digital goods, and taking Skype beyond the desktop. During this year we’ve launched Skype for Pocket PCs; you’ll see it for more handheld form factors, like WiFi phones.”

Also watch for SMB and enterprise-oriented Skype offerings, provided that Skype can master, and offer competitively acceptable solutions that meet business requirements for reliability, performance, and security.

“You will either see partnerships, to make sure they can guarantee end-to-end quality, or Skype will become a front end for services that will be delivered jointly,” says Bruno Zerbib, director of product management, Network Solutions at InfoVista S.A. ( www.infovista.com).

The question for consumers and business users now becomes either “The Skype’s the limit” or “whether there’s a Gizmo in our future.” Or both. As is the case with all Internet phenomena–anybody remember Gopher or Mosaic?–or other technology shoot-outs–can you say OS/2 or Amiga?–only history will tell. V