Enterprise Connect 2012 kicks off on March 26, just a week from next Monday, and the mobility track is shaping up to be one of the best we've had. All of the UC vendors have been touting the mobility angle, though many of their initiatives have received a tepid response from the user community. This year we expect a new wave of announcements, and we've provided a bunch of sessions dealing with the topic. Here's a quick rundown of what to look for.
The mobility track starts off with a deep-dive session titled "Developing an Enterprise Mobility Strategy," and conducted by yours truly on Monday, March 26 from 9:00 to 10:45 AM. The plan is to provide an update on the major mobility developments over the past year, and how users should be factoring them into their planning.
Clearly, BYOD is topping the list and we'll talk about planning and best practices for those initiatives. That will include a discussion of mobile device management systems, mobile ecosystems, and the major issues to be addressed in developing a mobility policy. We'll also talk about mobile UC and FMC solutions, the evolving role of tablets, how enterprise mobility initiatives should be organized, and we'll provide a primer on the topics that will be on display in the other mobility sessions.
From 1:00 to 1:45 PM Eric Krapf and I will co-moderate an Enterprise Connect Summit: "What's Next for the Mobile Enterprise?" This will be a roundtable of executives in the mobility area, and we'll talk about how the mobile UC business is evolving, what they see coming down the line and what they are doing to capitalize on it. The panel will feature Chris Kemmerer, Director of Global Unified Communications and Collaboration Solutions at Verizon; Joseph Martin, Director of Solutions Engineering at Sprint; and Randy Roberts, VP Mobility Product Management for Siemens. Joining us for the first time will be David Lowe, VP for B2B Sales for Samsung Mobile. We will also have BJ Haberkorn, Group Product Manager for Microsoft who will be making his first appearance on the mobility track, so we'll get to hear how mobility is working its way into Lync.
On Tuesday, March 27 from 2:30 to 3:30 PM. we'll revisit a topic we've discussed in previous years--"UC Mobile Devices in the Age of iPhones, Android and Tablets." The focus will be on developments on the device front, mobile ecosystems and how they will impact enterprise UC. Expect to hear a lot of discussion about how BYOD is changing the device picture, Android fragmentation, as well as the shift in market shares among the various mobile operating systems Among the panelists will be Cliff Cibelli, Group Manager-Product Management and Development, Managed Mobility Services for Verizon, John Cash, Senior Product Manager, Platform Advocacy for RIM, David Lowe from Samsung Mobile, and Joseph Martin for Sprint.
One new session we’ve added this year is called "Putting Mobility To Work: User Case Studies in Mobility," which runs Wednesday, March 28 from 8:00 to 8:45 AM. We asked the vendors to propose creative applications for their mobility products and we got some real winners. Oyvind Kaldestad, VP of IT for Lionbridge, will be talking about his company's successful deployment of Microsoft's Lync Mobile, particularly on the Windows Phone platform and how it has boosted employee productivity at this international translation services firm. Frank Wright, Director of Corporate Services at Chick-Fil-A restaurants will talk about his company's use of Avaya's oneX on both tablets and smartphones at their 1500+ locations. Finally, Karl Weintz, Vice President of Business Development for Mobile Access at HID Global will describe his company's use of near field communications (NFC) on BlackBerry smartphones for building entry systems.
One session I'm particularly excited about is called "Managing Wireless: To BYOD or Not To BYOD," on Wednesday, March 28 from 2:30 to 3:30 PM. BYOD has certainly been a hot topic this past year, and I'll be joined by Philippe Winthrop, Managing Director of Enterprise Mobility Foundation, along with some users who have been down this track. First is Keith Fancher, Program Manager Unified Communications Transformation in the Office of the CIO at IBM, where he is involved with the company’s program to bring BYOD to 200,000 IBMers. We'll also have Patrick O'Keefe, Manager UC/Security, IT Department, City of Mesa (AZ) who has been involved with BYOD in a government environment, and Robert Harris, President, Communications Advantage, Inc., who described his experiences with a BYOD initiative at one of his clients in a NoJitter post in January.
Finally, we'll be running "Tablet Tactics: What We've Learned About Tablets in the Enterprise," for the second year on Wednesday, March 28 at 3:45 to 4:30 PM. Our panelists will include John Lamarque, Director of Product Management for Cisco, Laura Bassett, Director of Marketing, Emerging Products and Technology at Avaya, Sean McManus, Director of Platform Advocacy in the Enterprise Business Unit at RIM and an as yet unidentified representative from Polycom. So we will get to hear about the Cisco Cius, the Avaya Desktop Video Device, the RIM PlayBook and what everyone is thinking about the market-leading Apple iPad. We will also be talking about the types of applications people are using tablets for, how they relate to smartphones and mobile UC, and I'm sure the subject of mobile video will be on everyone's mind.
So our coverage of mobility will span devices, ecosystems, carrier services, mobility policies, and applications. We have been lucky to get some of the smartest folks in the mobility space as well as a number of customer organizations that are willing to talk about their mobile applications and BYOD initiatives.
There will be a lot going on at Enterprise Connect again this year with three RFP sessions on UC, market forecasts, and lots of talk about federation, interoperability, video, collaboration and the cloud, but I hope you will be able to join us for some of the discussion of mobility. We’ve got a lot to talk about.
