Gartner doesn’t much like Skype. I think we already knew this, but they released a new report last week that removes any doubt. Network Week pulled out a couple of key quotes:

“Don’t use voice services based on proprietary protocols like Skype while on corporate networks, because of network security issues,” the firm said in a research note.

While it’s possible that Skype under EBay could release a business-class product, “I don’t think that drove what (EBay) did, so I wouldn’t look for that overnight,” Gartner analyst David Smith said.

So it’s time to decide what the real question is for those of us looking at Skype with regards to our Enterprises. Is it whether or not we should get into a Cat & Mouse game with our employees who would use Skype? Or whether Skype is an Enterprise product at all?

I don’t think that Skype has ever tried to imply that they are an Enterprise solution. I’ve had several conversations with them and the feedback we have consistently received is that while their target market is consumers, they were always happy to have more users, regardless of where they came from.

To imply that something is not an “Enterprise” solution, however, solely because the vendor are not trying to sell it to Enterprises does not make sense to me. Whether the sticker on the side that says, “Consumer” or “Enterprise” is irrelevant. It either meets a set of requirements or it doesn’t.

Currently, though, most Enterprises lack any agreed-upon set of requirements for a softphone solution. Nature abhors a vacuum, though, so users are adopting Skype to fill the need since it meets user requirements extremely well.

From the security and network engineering perspective, it creates a number of potential risks since we can’t snoop inside its encryption. From a malware perspective, this is worrisome but assuming that the registry hooks to disable file sharing work as promised in the 1.4 version, this risk can then be largely mitigated by pushing some Group Policy Objects to enforce the official written policy.

If the risk is that we don’t trust our employees to have unaudited voice or IM, then I think the threat needs to be highlighted and discussed so we can be address it through an appropriate combination of improved management, awareness training and in the worst case, HR. Regardless, this problem will not be solved at the technological level.

At this time, there are high-level people within my Enterprise with a strong desire to utilize Skype as a toll bypass solution for their employees who travel internationally. The current costs to be avoided are significant spending on cell phone charges.

If the alternative is to provide our own solution to this problem, then it must be publicized as soon as possible and its adoption accelerated. Otherwise, we should not be surprised that our co-workers solve problems to the best of their ability with the resources available.

Either way, I’m not convinced that banning Skype without providing a viable alternative is an acceptable approach to solving the Business’ demand for some kind of softphone solution.