Mobility Forces Loom Large in UC

A Cooperative Project of VoiceCon and UCStrategies.com, originally posted December 13, 2007

The mobility stampede is on! Between the worlds of wireless voice (aka cell phones) and wireless data (e.g., Blackberry, Windows Mobile), the picture is shaping up very quickly. The suppliers are counting on each of us having a personal “end point” that is always with us and can connect us to both our business and our personal communities.

As a result, everyone in Unified Communications (UC) is rushing to get a piece of the action. Here’s what I’m seeing from three powerful forces—the mobile device makers, the IP-PBX producers, and the enterprise application software firms.

First, the device makers. A year ago, Nokia bought Intellisync, enhancing its ability to put email on Nokia devices. Last month, Motorola bought Good Technology, to do the same thing. Of course, they are competing for a share of the “Blackberry” pie that Research in Motion (RIM) created and continues to dominate.

But RIM is not standing still. Of course, you can already buy a Blackberry with cell phone voice capability (see my mobile case study at https://www.voiploop.com and https://ucstrategies.com). And then, this past March, RIM took a big leap forward with its purchase of Ascendant, which claims to be, “a leading provider of enterprise voice mobility solutions that provide single-number reachability, real-time notification and conferencing, and voice continuity.”

Bottom line: Enterprise voice and email environments are increasingly going to be available on your mobile phone.

However, the IP-PBX players can’t let the office telephone number get taken over by the partnership of device makers and mobile network operators. They needed to act, which explains why Cisco acquired Orative in October, a move that “will allow Cisco to extend its Unified Communications portfolio to mobile devices such as cell phones and smartphones.”

Then, just weeks later, Avaya snapped up Traverse Networks, a direct competitor of Orative. Avaya said the Traverse capabilities will “support simplified employee collaboration and more productive use of communications, wherever people work and across a broader range of devices.”

The message is pretty clear from both Cisco and Avaya: They see mobile devices playing a key role in their enterprise communication systems.

And there’s a third major force: Enterprise application providers. Microsoft, of course, now extends the Microsoft Office suite to mobile devices with Windows Mobile 5. This includes email, IM and presence indication, plus Office Communicator control of calling and conferencing.

IBM is responding with Lotus Sametime, augmented with a rich mobile application development environment known as Websphere Everyplace Mobile Portal. IBM already has impressive mobile business-process applications in place. At VoiceCon Fall, for example, IBM shared applications for auto-calling from order management software to logistics managers to handle exceptions and for finding and calling experts by category (i.e. not by name) from a web portal, letting the software scan Sametime presence for availability.

Meanwhile, Sybase extended the reach of its Information Anywhere suite with the acquisition in September of Mobile 365, a fast-growing provider of messaging and content delivery. Sybase said the acquisition “extends our Unwired Enterprise vision…making Sybase the leading mobile enterprise software and services provider in the world.” Those are big claims.

What does all this mean? In the UC world, more and more voice and video communications will be launched from and connected to a mobile wireless device. And calls increasingly will be launched by clicking a directory entry, an email address, an IM presence indication or a transaction button in an enterprise application portal.

If this forecast is correct, we’ll see RIM Blackberry, Microsoft Office Communicator and IBM Sametime controlling the user interface, while companies like Cisco and Avaya position their products as the most available, practical and economical vehicles for communication control and connectivity for enterprise mobile device users.

Mobility applications do not apply to every employee, but they do apply to some of the most important jobs—those that face customers—and to some of the most important processes—customer service, transaction processing and information sharing. Mobility applications should have some of the highest ROI potential in the UC category.

As a practical matter, I suggest two simple steps: First, pick the mobile interface you want to build on in your company; second, form a team of telecom, IT and line managers to deploy new UC applications onto the interface you’ve chosen. The scope and impact of the changes UC enables just might compare with the impact web browsers have had on customer self-service and employee productivity.

And come to VoiceCon Spring, where you’ll see these trends on full display.

What do you think? Send your comments, thoughts and questions about Unified Communications planning to marty@parkerbiz.com or https://ucstrategies.com.

Marty Parker
Principal Consultant
Communications Perspectives

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