Mobile UC: Where to Start?

If you are responsible for your company’s unified communications (UC) strategy by now your focus should be mobile UC.  Why spend time and money on developing a fixed UC infrastructure when all you’re doing is locking in a competitive disadvantage?   Mobile UC is here today but, given all the false starts, it’s hard not to be a skeptic.

One of the reasons many enterprises sit where they do today – frustrated and no further ahead – is that traditional enterprise communication vendors such as Alcatel-Lucent, Avaya, Cisco, and Nortel  and the major carriers such as AT&T, T-Mobile, Verizon, and Vodafone have muddied the waters.  They are more interested in maintaining, and building on, the status quo than changing the game.  And most enterprise buyers are susceptible to that message because it gets delivered to them regularly by a dedicated account manager and because the alternatives come with greater perceived risks.

But the game has shifted and it makes sense to look outside the box.  Start by looking at enterprise messaging and mobile platform vendors such as Microsoft and, yes, even Google.  After all, mobile UC can be boiled down to enterprise-wide (and even inter-enterprise) collaboration in real-time.  You should look at Microsoft because, in all likelihood, Outlook is your primary collaboration tool today and SharePoint is on your radar.  Look at Google if you’re in the SMB camp.

In my previous post I noted that Windows Mobile 7 represents the last of Microsoft’s lives in the mobile world.  One way for them to make it count is to create an enterprise class mobile UC environment tightly integrated with Windows Mobile 7.

There can be no discussion of mobile UC without an embedded discussion of fixed mobile convergence (FMC).  In a nutshell, FMC is the ability to roam seamlessly between public and private networks.  FMC requires the installation of an appliance connected to your PBX from one of the large communications gear vendors or a dedicated mobile UC vendor such as Divitas Networks or Agito Networks.  FMC is not mobile UC but, assuming a philosophy of using private networks for mobile communications, there can be no mobile UC without FMC.  (An interesting argument can be made  for a completely public network approach to mobile UC but that’s the subject of a future post.)

To summarize, a mobile UC architecture requires two components: a unified messaging platform and FMC infrastructure.  The particular components chosen should reflect the size of your organization, the need for scalability, and your overall communication strategy.  Start by creating your messaging strategy and then focus on the pieces you need to build out mobile UC.  It’s all there today but making the wrong decisions will only lead to more frustration and competitive disadvantage.