I just spent the latter part of last week at Interop New York, where I made my regular tour of the Wireless and Mobility sessions. The one thought that struck me most pointedly was the fact that the term "unified communications" did not come up in any of the mobility sessions I attended. I did introduce it in my session on "Darwin and the Handset: Who Survives," but outside of that there was nary a mention.
Our own Eric Krapf chairs a separate track on VoIP and Unified Communications, and coincidentally those sessions took place in a meeting room adjacent to the mobility sessions. However, while the UC proponents were talking about mobility, the mobility folks were not talking about UC.
On the mobility track, the whole issue of "voice" got little more than a passing mention, despite the fact that voice still represents roughly 75% of the mobile operators’ revenues. Voice did come up in the session on "The All-Wireless Enterprise: Can Wire be Replaced?" thanks to two of the panelists, Marten Terpstra and Scott Lindsay, who hail from Avaya and HP respectively--albeit from the WLAN parts. They pointed out that until we are able to transmit electric power through the air in a practical fashion, there will be a role for wire (and Power over Ethernet) in supporting desk sets reliably.
Besides the technical discussion about gigabit WLANs and WLAN switch architectures, probably the most interesting topic in mobility was the consumerization of IT. Mobility is clearly on the front line of the consumerization battle, an issue that really took shape around the idea of users dumping their BlackBerries and bringing iPhones (or Androids) to work.
Having grown up in the command and control mentality of traditional IT, I am predisposed to trash the consumerization idea. However, being a realist I recognize that some degree of coalescence to user requests is inevitable if IT is going to survive.
The recognition that consumerization is inevitable seemed to permeate the mobility track, and there was much discussion about how we could best support this growing population of mobile device types. While there is still minimal adoption of mobile device management (MDM) systems like those from Good Technologies, Sybase, and Mobile Iron, they are certainly being considered. Those tools are starting to provide the BlackBerry-style management capabilities we seek for iPhones and Androids; Windows Mobile, WebOS, Symbian and the rest of the mobile O/S options are not getting much attention.
While an MDM solution can give IT some degree of management and security control over non-BlackBerry devices, they will still require some changes in device policies, user responsibilities, or the establishment of different tiers of support for different mobile platforms at least in the near-term. Based on the extended discussions regarding this topic, it's clear that at least the more progressive IT organizations are coming to grips with the realities of consumerization.
While the consumerization topic may seem irrelevant to UC, nothing could be farther from the truth. Users are interested in bringing their much-prized mobility experience to work, but no one is begging for UC. That thought should send chills down the spines of the UC proponents. If users' inputs are going to be more important in the network technologies, strategies to get users excited and talking about UC will be key. I think the UC vendors may have a major marketing job in front of them.
Conclusion
Mobility has taken on a life of its own, and on one that is near and dear to the hearts of the user community. We’re starting to gear up for Enterprise Connect, and there will be a number of sessions on mobility. One of the big questions we’ll be raising is why UC vendors have talked so much about incorporating mobility, and yet "call forwarding" remains the number one mobile integration solution.
Success in the technology fields will hinge on perspective and the ability to see the whole picture. While unified communications may be leading edge in the world of PBXs and voice communications, it’s not the centerpiece (or even a "side piece") as far as the user is concerned.
So while UC vendors have been telling us how they are going to "incorporate mobility", it may be time to take a step back and recognize who is the "tail" and who is the "dog".
