Online Collaboration and Skype

If you want to enable your employees and clients to throw together a quick online meeting anytime, then you should check out Skype. Skype offers free VoIP—voice over IP—services from anywhere in the world with a broadband connection and, for a fee, can even be linked to an actual phone line, allowing people from around the world to make an internet phone call to your mobile and costing neither party any expensive long distance charges. What's more, multiple parties can be invited to and dial into the phone conference, and those who are sitting in front of computers can illustrate their point in chat windows by typing or pasting in relevant information to the conversation. IT groups from around the world are discovering that Skype greatly enhances their online collaboration, so it's well worth checking out, especially with its $0 price tag.