Microsoft highlights dangers of business use of Skype

Security issues make free software VoIP services such as Skype a dangerous communications tool for business use, according to Microsoft.

Gurdeep Singh Pall, corporate vice president of Microsoft's Unified Communications Group, said that the call quality on Skype is normally adequate for the needs of business.

However, he pointed out that allowing employees to use their own Skype IDs to build up a list of customer contacts meant they could take that list with them if they left for a competitor.

While the recent Skype outage would have severely affected businesses relying on the service, Mr Pall added that VoIP services were still developing but were set to be the future of communications.

He compared VoIP's growing pains to the development of the automobile, saying: "A buggy salesman would tell you not to buy a car because it could break down, but no one's taking horse-drawn buggies to work anymore."

Mr Pall also announced at the VoiceCon conference in San Francisco, California, that a feature of Microsoft's Office Communications Server 2007 will be the ability for IT managers to watch VoIP calls quality in real time.