In the past two VoiceCon Webinars that I've moderated, we received a question that was repeated almost identically, with only very minor variations in wording, from a different attendee in each session. Essentially, each person said: Folks in my enterprise want to know why, as our Mobile Unified Communications strategy, we can't just give everyone Blackberries and call it a day?
Sounds simple, doesn't it?And indeed, several of the leading Unified Communications vendors, including Microsoft and IBM, have clients for the Blackberry. But the question in these webinars was more along the lines of, Isn't the Blackberry, all by itself, Mobile UC--or at least close enough?
On our most recent webinar, Mike Berlin of AVST explained why he believes the answer is no: "The key to us...is to also give them the next step--whether that's a mobile client that gives them backend access to customer data, which means they can make a decision very quickly to say, Yes that product shipped and it will be delivered on your doorstep on X date, without having to make 15 inquiries to do so. Then that is a useful deployment of that technology."
In other words, your Blackberry-enabled users are seeing what these devices in their present form can do for them, while UC says Blackberries can be even more. Implicit in the audience questions has been the idea that if you buy everyone Blackberries, you don't need to spend any more money on that fancy UC stuff. Just give us the devices and don't bother us with more stuff to learn.
Most of us can see the sizeable gap between that notion and the explanation that Mike Berlin gave about the potential to do more. But in bad economic times, I wonder if the business units will go for it.
The approach that makes sense, for IT, is to disabuse any such Blackberry-only proponents of the notion that such service is kinda sorta basically free once you pay for the devices. You, on the other hand, know that if you throw Blackberries to the masses and turn them loose, they'll get a lot of work done on the road--while running up rather enormous bills.
Any enterprise that goes with a cellular service as its primary communications strategy for some or all of its users must come to grips with the reality that wireless costs are exploding in the enterprise. At VoiceCon San Francisco next month, two great consultants, Steve Leaden and Robert Harris, will be running a session on "Managing Your Cellular Spend." Steve opens up his presentation with these sobering data points:
* Wireless voice and data services now represent *25 percent* of U.S. enterprises' total telecom spend, according to the Yankee Group.
* Another report, from Insight Research, pegs this figure at *one-third* of the corporate bill for telecommunication services in 2006
* U.S. corporate spending on wireless voice and mobile data services will *exceed* business spending on all wireline voice and data services by 2010, according to InStat.
Wireless is the way of the future, and spending is going that way. This fact remains hidden, most likely, in enterprises where individual employees' cellular bills are expensed, rather than the enterprise having a corporate-liable contract. But as Robert Harris points out, corporate-liable contracts have their own challenges, in that if you don't structure your contracts and per-minute rates correctly, you could wind up paying a lot more than you think.
