The question begs: GTalk, Skype or both?
CGIAR staff frequently use online tools to communicate with colleagues and partners around the globe. Many of these tools have made a significant, positive impact on the way staff work by facilitating communication and information sharing.
Until recently, some CGIAR Centers used Microsoft’s Live Communications Server (LCS) version 2005, an internal instant messaging (IM) system that integrates other IM applications (MSN, AOL and Yahoo) using a single client. LCS wasn’t deployed widely in the CGIAR mainly because the Voice over Internet Protocol (VoIP) conversations between Centers didn’t work properly. This was due to the different security levels and network environments across Centers, as well as some limitations with LCS itself. In addition, the implementation of LCS incurred monthly costs for server maintenance and per-user licensing charges.
Consequently, the decision has been made to remove LCS from the CGIAR’s portfolio of services come September 2009 and explore alternatives.
As the Technical Coordinator of the ICT-KM program, I’ve been working with a group of CGIAR IT managers over the past few months to research possible cost-effective alternatives to replace LCS. The objective is to find a tool (or set of tools) that:
- doesn’t incur high licensing and server maintenance costs
- has a user management that can be integrated with CGIAR Active Directory, which presently has over 8500 users
- allows users to make calls to landlines and mobile phones at low rates given the high cost of communications between Centers and with CGIAR partners and to a much lesser extent within Centers
With these requirements in mind, we started exploring GTalk and Skype, both of which are applications in the cloud.
While a system-wide decision is yet to be made, I would like to share the information I’ve collected so far about these tools and present a comparison table.
Google Talk (GTalk)
In mid 2008, the CGIAR tried out Google Apps as a suite of collaboration tools. The ICT-KM Program gathered the feedback from users and published it in the CGIAR Google Apps Case Study Report. Then, in January 2009, it was decided to implement Google Apps Education edition to replace the CGXchange BEA Aqualogics infrastructure and take advantage of the collaboration tools in the Google Apps package: Docs, Sites, Calendar, Google Talk, etc.
GTalk Downloadble Client
Google Talk is a free web-based application for instant messaging and voice over internet protocol (VOIP), offered by Google Inc.
Instant messaging between the Google Talk servers and its clients uses an open protocol, XMPP, allowing users of other XMPP clients to communicate with Google Talk users.
For more information about Google Talk, click here.
Skype
, another popular VoIP software with IM functionality, is already more widely used than Google Talk in the CGIAR. Skype, which has been owned by eBay since 2005, is free to download and has more than 443 million users around the world as of March 2009 (according to EBay).
One of the main differences between Google Talk and Skype is that the latter allows users to make free PC-to-PC calls as well as low-cost long-distance or international phone calls to landlines and mobile phones over the Internet.
Skype uses a peer-to-peer protocol and offers voicemail, chat, videoconferencing and an expanding array of additional services. Skype is not a replacement for ordinary telephones and cannot be used for emergency calling.
Source: Skype
While Skype was originally intended for personal communications, the service also offers significant appeal as a low-cost, long-distance service for businesses, particularly for companies that need to communicate internationally.
There are some 3rd-party Skype solutions for business such as Skip2PBX and VoSky Exchange to name a few that offer the possibility of integrating Skype with their PBX systems. However, Skype has begun testing a connection to corporate VoIP systems (Skype For SIP for Business Users), something that enterprises have been asking for years and which is currently undergoing beta testing.
Although Skype is a great tool for making competitively priced calls to landlines and mobile phones, I feel it needs to improve its online presence indicator – sometimes, online users are shown as being offline when their status if set to online. I’ve also received some instant messages several days after they were sent. In short, the IM feature is not always so ‘instant’ after all.
For more information about Skype, click here
Comparison between Google Talk and Skype
See the Google Talk and Skype comparison table
Conclusions
In my opinion, Google Talk is more enterprise-oriented than Skype, has a good level of security, requires less bandwidth, collaborative features that work well with the implementation of Google Applications Education Edition (CGX 2.0), and integrates with our Active Directory through third-party tools, to name just a few advantages.
Skype, on the other hand, is an application with many interesting features that Google Talk doesn’t have at the moment, such as the ability to establish a conference call with up to five people at a time and the ability to make phone calls to mobiles and landlines worldwide at low rates. However, this software requires more bandwidth than Google Talk and it is blocked in some CGIAR Centers as a result.
In summary, there is no single tool that does it all. At the moment I use Google Talk mostly for work-related purposes since it’s directly linked with the Google Apps CGX 2.0 collaboration workspace and with external partners or friends that have Gmail accounts.
I mostly use Skype for personal communications or when I need to make international phone calls or send a text message. I hope Google introduces a feature that will allow users to make phone calls to landlines and mobile phones at low-rates with Google Talk. Google is working on Google Voice, the next version of Grand Central (presently in private beta), which will allow users to make international calls, conference calls and send text messages. However, it’s not known if Google Voice will be integrated with Google Talk. If that were to happen, we would have a real killer application at our disposal.
Keep a look out for the full report on the ‘Selection of a communication tool in the CGIAR’ – to be published soon!
Until the next time, the question still begs: GTalk, Skype or both?
9 Responses to “The question begs: GTalk, Skype or both?”
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This is a really good initiative and I also think GTalk best suits CGIAR as a enterprise comm. tool.
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For me the main advantage over Skype is there is no “webskype”.
I use meebo also since I like to keep in touch with all my contacts (yahoo, msn, gtalk) when away from office / home.
AND meebo has GTalk
When reading your post, I just thought that it would give you good insight of the actual usage of both these tools if you can have a simple poll on the ICTKM blog or site.
I think this will help to make a decision on the best tool to adopt for the CGIAR.
Gtalk, Skype, Yahoo, MSN, Jabber, MySpace IM, add a couple of dozen others including old ones such as ICQ and (oh horror) IRC and you have a weird and wonderful mix of social notworking tools. I don’t really care too much about a standard. Users want Skype, we make it available (safely, using the enterprise version of Skype). Users want any or all of the other ones (which have at least a modicum of standardized or at least published protocols): we give them Pidgin. We’ve even been successful in making Pidgin work with the dreaded Microsoft LCS.
By the way: “WebSkype” as desired by Chandima in the previous post *does* exist. Check http://www.imo.im where you can log into your Skype account with just a web browser.
Summary: Power to the user. When in doubt, communicate.
“Shock threat to shut Skype”
You may want to have a look at this article as well: http://www.theage.com.au/technology/biz-tech/shock-threat-to-shut-skype-20090731-e3qe.html – Maybe the problem will be solved by an unexpected party (the original makers of Skype) as a result of greed.
At the Sharefair we did a demonstration of a system from the UK Open University that is in use by FAO/GILW and that we called by wont of a better name er ferred to as “Flashmeeting”. It allows for larger group calls, more structuring / moderating of the meeting and meetings can be recorded. Presently the system is used at the UK OU site but potentially an instance can be ran somewhere else.
i agree with Marco’s comment:
“Power to the user” instead of spending so much time looking on one solution to fit all… we are in the times to see see what the staff and its collaborators are using in their daily work and try to make it work for them.
thanks tanya for your review. this was a good idea. my initial comment on gtalk is that it is more limited since you need to be a gmail user and not everyone has a gmail account. skype offers the search users function whereas gtalk does not -perhaps I am mistaken? so for the moment it looks like skype is more practical for ‘work’ contacts
“gtalk is more limited since you need to be a gmail user” – ehhhhh – you need to be a Skype user to use Skype as well…
Search function: some (including me) would argue that a function that allows everyone to find your address is more harmful than useful.
Marco
LuzMa, I agree that in this case we probably don’t need to set a single tool as ‘the’ standard because there is no single best and that’s what I say in the post. However, I believe this exercise has been quite useful since it’s very important that the IT people look into the dfferent options available for the users (because it’s our task to guide them). We plan to extract a set of good practices and recommendations for end-users that will help them towards the selection of the tools that best adapts to their needs and with those used by our partners.
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