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Users Moving Tentatively Toward FMC and Mobile UC

I have been following with great interest the discussion on the future of IP phones from Dave Michels and Irwin Lazar. While the desktop IP phone may be in jeopardy, it is quite clear that the mobile device is here to stay--good news for those of us in the mobile space. As Dave points out, people do love their cell phones, and with application-rich environments like the iPhone, the consumer smartphone has become a new and unique product category. Irwin's research at Nemertes reflects what I've been seeing with enterprise buyers, which is that they are interested in integrating mobility, but in practice they are still struggling to get their cellular spending under control.I recently did a 1-hour Webinar for the Voice Report titled "Mobilize Unified Communications: Fixed Mobile Convergence and Beyond," which allowed me to throw in some survey questions and get a real time compilation of the results. The biggest piece of information I was looking for was: which of these solutions were people actually deploying?

We had 147 attendees, and while that is not a large sample, they were all people with an obvious interest in the area. Of those, 84% were either end users (51%) or consultants (33%). The post-webinar detail identified how each participant answered, so it was possible to cull out obvious results like the fact that vendors will actually use their own products. This was the most illustrative question:

As Nemertes found in their research, the solutions that are dominating the press coverage like dual mode and PBX smartphone clients aren't getting much traction. Irwin noted that one of the key reasons for the slow uptake in dual-mode Wi-Fi/cellular solutions was user concerns regarding the cost to upgrade the WLAN infrastructure. However when you add to that the limited range of handsets, poor support in CDMA environments, and rather limited UC functionality, it's not hard to see that the dual mode crowd is fighting an uphill battle

The responses seem to demonstrate that users are depending on cellular rather than Wi-Fi technology for their mobility, and they are using the most basic capabilities on the PBX, call forwarding and simultaneous ring, to get the calls to their mobile. This doesn't bode well for the PBX manufacturers all of whom love to highlight the importance of mobility in their product lines.

With the move to unified communications, we anticipate that the user will have two focal points for their communications, a desktop hard- or softphone and an associated mobile device. However, a compelling mobile product will require an intuitive user interface, tight coupling between the desktop and mobile environments with the ability to extend presence, directory access, collaboration, and the multimedia capabilities of UC to the mobile. Essentially the mobile should be a get-up-and-go alter ego to the desktop device.

For the moment, the mobile experience is developing independently of what's going on in the PBX. The mobile solution is increasingly a BlackBerry smartphone augmented with the BlackBerry Enterprise Server (BES). While it is still the gold standard for enterprise smartphones, BlackBerry is notably deficient when it comes to Wi-Fi. They do support Wi-Fi on seven models, but none do Wi-Fi exclusively, a key capability for users who are mobile but only within the building or campus. Further, even if the device supports Wi-Fi, the only voice-over-wireless LAN capability is for carrier-provided Unlicensed Mobile Access (UMA), the technology that underlies T-Mobile's and Roger's dual-mode solutions (Note: Agito did recently announce support for WLAN voice using BlackBerry devices on their dual mode FMC solutions). So the locally mobile are opting for a Polycom/SpectraLink, Cisco, or Vocera VoWLAN handset.

Most IP PBX manufacturers offer mobile UC software clients for the BlackBerry, but if our survey results are representative of the population as a whole, the users are opting for the native BlackBerry software and BES capabilities. With links to the Microsoft OCS and IBM Sametime environments through the BES, the role of the PBX is relegated to forwarding calls. In terms of the overall mobile functionality, the PBX is essentially out of the loop.

Conclusion Mobility is one of the core elements of UC, but neither the PBX nor UC vendors have been able to capitalize on it as yet. In my opinion the reason is that they have not come up with a compelling product that can rival the BlackBerry experience. For managers and professional workers, going forward, OCS or Sametime could become the anchor for the desktop UC, and an interface with the BES would extend that to the mobile. The PBX could well become the "clerical" phone system or the ACD platform.

On the other hand, if the PBX and UC vendors can deliver a cost-effective mobile capability that is tightly coupled to a federated UC solution, supports a range of handsets, and allows the user to make use of their Wi-Fi network as well as public Wi-Fi hotspots (in a secure fashion), they could work their way back into the mobile value chain. Mobility is one of the key swing points in UC, and for now, that position is up for grabs.