Let's first look at Yeva's question:

Bunch of my users are always at me to make Sametime work with Skype. I tell them Sametime better than Skype, but they don't listen. They insist. Why don't they listen? Sametime does voice and it does text and all the rest.

Well, Yeva, long experience has told me that our user constiuencies want what they want and it's often hard to dissuade them from something once they're set on an idea. But I think I know what's going on.

Sametime is an excellent enterprise-level messaging and collaboration platform, but the key here is "enterprise". There are a lot of people in the world that don't use Sametime, either because they've never had the pleasure of using it, or because they're just not part of an organization that would field something as powerful and flexible as Sametime.

On the other hand, Skype is free, easy, and everywhere. My guess is that your users want to connect with Skype users, and don't really want to install Skype and manage both user directories in separate applications.

And that brings us to Jeb, who asks:

Is there any way to integrate Skype with Sametime. I know there are different protocols, but if we could even just merge the directories, it'd be a start.

As far as I know, there's only one way to integrate Sametime and Skype, and that's with a Sametime plugin from Pentos in Munich.

They offer a neat little program called Sametime 2 Skype that puts the Skype contact list into the Sametime window, and lets you initiate virtually all of the Skype services directly from the Sametime window.

There appear to be some caveats, though. First, every computer with Sametime and the Sametime 2 Skype plugin will also need the full Skype installed as well. Second, it doesn't look like you can set up audio chats or text message chats as a conference with some members using Skype and some using Sametime. Hopefully, we'll see that sometime soon.

David Gewirtz is the author of How To Save Jobs and Where Have All The Emails Gone? For more than 20 years, he has analyzed current, historical, and emerging issues relating to technology, competitiveness, and policy. David is the Editor-in-Chief of the ZATZ magazines, is the Cyberterrorism Advisor for the International Association for Counterterrorism and Security Professionals, and is a member of the instructional faculty at the University of California, Berkeley extension. He can be reached at david@zatz.com and you can follow him at http://www.twitter.com/DavidGewirtz.