Blog Entry

It's time again for GWCheck Talk. Another in-depth interview with a great GroupWise partner.

I had the opportunity to talk to Christian Karch, COO for SkyPro, a great company that adds unique VoIP solutions to GroupWise.

Gert: Who is SkyPRO?

Christian: SKyPRO is a 21 year old Swiss firm, founded in 1987 and based in Cham, near Zurich. SKyPRO is a software manufacturer and provides software products and custom programming in the areas of Novell applications and Identity Management.

Current and past clients include Swisscom, Swisscard, UBS, Credit Suisse, Novell, and Microsoft, plus many others.

Gert: Welcome to the GroupWise world, what is the importance of GroupWise to SkyPRO?

Christian: SKyPRO has built has built a significant portion of its business on its significant Novell domain expertise. We have been a Novell shop and GroupWise user ever since our inception. Producing software Add-Ons for GroupWise we are comitted to support the GroupWise community in any way we can. SKyPRO is sponsoring GW-User Groups all over the world and takes part at all major GroupWise events.

Gert: What do you see as the capabilities the SkyCOM solution brings to GroupWise?

Christian: SKyPRO's Software products and services are designed to add unified communications capabilities to GroupWise. Our Products help to lower communications costs and increase employee productivity and convenience.

SKyCOM allows cost effective voice, fax and SMS communication all from the GroupWise environment. We reduce the cognitive friction that comes from having to leave your GroupWise environment to make a call, send a fax or SMS a colleague.

Gert: How does SkyPRO position itself into the GroupWise community and -market and what are the challenges ?

Christian: SKyPRO has a unique position in the GroupWise environment. We use VoIP and SIP based technology to add unified communications functions to GroupWise.

Using VoIP technology we are being confronted with the need to "educate" the community on telecommunications. Using a soft phone client is combined with the use of the phone server.

When presenting SKyCOM, our softphone client, we also have to talk about phone servers, their capabilities and of course their cost. Few people know that an expensive phone server can easily be replaced by an open source software called Asterisk and save thousands of dollars.

We see this market shift to VoIP as a huge change that provides cost benefits to a significant portion of the GroupWise User Base, traditional phone costs especially for mobile and or virtual office users are getting turned on their heads.

An Asterisk VoIP solution can provide a entire organization, including the remote and virtual offices, with a cost effective solution that was not available five years ago. The availability of dependable high speed internet bandwidth has made this possible along with Asterisk Open source telephony solutions.

Gert: What platforms do you support / or need?

Christian: Our products work with GroupWise 7 or higher. They run on Windows Vista or Windows XP. SKyCOM can be used with any SIP compatible PBX or a Asterisk Open Source PBX.

Gert: You have a U.S. office since this year. What brings you guys to the U.S. market?

Christian: Being a Europe based company does not make our products exclusive for Europe ;-)

We are aware that the United States is home for over 60% of all GroupWise installs worldwide. To be able to serve this market and also to stay in touch with the local user groups we opened up our first U.S. office in Sunnyvale, the heart of Silicon Valley.

Gert: Where can we meet SkyPRO people?

Christian: Our Offices are in Switzerland, the Ukraine, and in the United States. Whenever a GroupWise friend wants to visit us, we will be more than happy to show them around!

We also take part in all major GroupWise events around the World. GWAVA Tours and GWAVACON, Novell Tours and Brainshare, Open Horizons tours, events and Summits.

SKyPRO also attends many local user group meetings all over the World. The most important thing the GW community needs to know is that we are available in Europe, Asia and North America and be contacted via our website.

Gert: Where to go to for support, info, demo's and other questions?

Christian: Our Website features a Forum where everyone is in direct contact with our developers. Support is provided through our Distributors, Resellers and directly from SKyPRO.

Visit our page for more information (www.skypro.us.com).

Other references: SKyPRO Introduces First Voice Over IP Calling Solution Integrated With Novell GroupWise.
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