Mobile UC is So EuropeanMobile UC is So European

Thats a tongue in cheek headline. Recently I saw a short article that said Unified Communications is so today while mobile VoIP (and therefore mobile UC) is so tomorrow, the stated reason being that the U.S. doesnt have nationwide 3G and you need 3G in order to get decent quality from cellular VoIP. You can do UC without VoIP. TeleWare does it using open standard based software with traditional PBX interfaces (this site is worth visiting), but in practice the majority of products have been designed on the assumption that the VoIP component will be transported over 3G. Thus, the author was right.

However, Europe does have good 3G coverage and the Old World has been at the forefront of mobile innovation and deployment its where digital cellular telephony started so one would expect to find that mobile UC is deliverable today.

That assumption is more or less correct: more because there are no significant impediments, less because its an application thats at the early adopter stage. But I would expect it to grow very rapidly since the productivity and cost benefits of mobile UC are significant, and it is logical to assume that they are higher than UC on office phones. Cell phones are, after all, the preferred communications device because we carry them around all the time. In addition, a high percentage of the average workforce is mobile, and many calls are not answered immediately, e.g. the individual may be driving, in a meeting or a noisy environment. The office environment is very different: when the phone rings you pick it up.

The operators voice mail service is expensive, and without UCs ability to see the called partys presence and availability, you can end up playing telephone tag. I pay my own phone bill, so if the mobile doesnt answer after a few rings I send an SMS saying that I am trying to get in touch. In contrast, when your employer picks up the tab, there is less reason to be concerned about costs. Thus, while enterprises tend to see productivity as being the biggest UC benefit, SMEs are more concerned about the bottom line, i.e., avoiding costs like excessive voice mail use. Nevertheless, according to a 2007 survey from EVUA, which is a global telecom user group, while nearly 30% of SMEs [across Europe] are deploying UC in some form, another 30% have no plans at all (or have not even heard of the term UC before).

One example of a mobile UC client is CiceroPhone (right), a converged multi-mode softphone that supports Fixed, VoIP and Cellular calls and media services on a single device. This UC client is available on Nokia S60 and Windows Mobile devices. The company also has an FMC solution that it markets to service providers.

PRESENCE IS A POWERFUL PARAMETER

Mobile UC is facilitated by the fact that mobile network operators know the presence status of all the subscribers on their network: its an operating parameter whose commercial value only became apparent when IM started hitting desktops. Unfortunately the MNOs held this card too close to their corporate chest and didnt allow it to be incorporated in UC solutions. The big bucks they saw was the youth end of the consumer market. Furthermore, MNOs love voice mail and telephone tag: the more wasted calls you make the more money they bank. They also love SMS and are not going to take kindly to IM on mobiles because the margins are much lower.

Yet, as in so many areas of telecommunications, operators have been overtaken by events. Mobile phones now have open operating systems Linux, Windows Mobile and Symbian and they have powerful computing and display resources. These devices can therefore download or embed application software and work in client-server mode. This development is well underway, and when it involves an enterprise server, there is no need to tap into the operators resources and pay for the privilege.

In response, a group of key operators, infrastructure and device vendors comprising Orange, Telecom Italia, Telef�nica, TeliaSonera, Ericsson, Nokia Siemens Networks, Nokia, Sony Ericsson and Samsung announced an initiative called the Rich Communication Suite, debuted at the Mobile World Conference earlier this year. The focus is on enriching communications, but the core technology elements are the same as for UC (voice, presence, messaging, video, all working together). For the telcos, the initiative is tightly linked to IMS and SIP. However, it may take quite a few years for presence to be federated across the telco and enterprise domains.

Meanwhile, there is some divergence of interests between the operators and the equipment vendors. Nokia, which employs the Symbian OS, is market leader by a very wide margin in Europe, and they have been very active in promoting their phones as open systems--one of several moves that have not pleased the operators. However, meeting the needs and aspirations of the marketplace is more important.

And then (inevitably) there is Microsoft. MS has no reason to be particularly concerned about operators, and of course there is a tight fit between Windows Mobile devices and the companys corporate UC solution. However, that does not guarantee success. Mobile phones have entered corporate environments as personal devices, and many employees would not take kindly to a forced swap and an unfamiliar interface. Asking a Nokia user to switch to the MS UI is like asking a Mac user to switch to Vista.

FMC AS THE SERVICE, MOBILE UC AS THE APP

The telecommunications industry tends to confuse services and applications. In my book, FMC is a service and UC is an application.

Do I hear a so what? Well, think about it for a moment. FMC allows you transition from wide area networks to local area networks and vice versa. Without FMC, the call would be dropped. So without FMC, youd also lose the presence of your colleagues: to get them back youd have to reconnect with the server. That may seem obvious, but as Doug Mohney of FierceVOIP recently wrote, a number of companies that were in the fixed-mobile convergence (FMC) world...are now reimagining/rebranding themselves into a Mobile Unified Communications camp. That makes sense, because even though UC is seen as the Next Big Thing, FMC is a prerequisite for a meaningful Mobile UC experience.

The close link between FMC and UC on a mobile device leads us to an interesting question. Should FMC vendors offer integrated solutions, or should they stay with their original core competence, the spin being that the customers can then select the optimum mobile UC offer along with the devices? In turn, that leads to the different requirements of enterprises and SMBs.

Businesses need FMC to ensure a seamless experience for their users. After all, the key to mobile UC is the ability for the user to stay connected to the resources they need while being mobile and moving between locations and networks. An example of UC functionality embedded at the application layer is the ability to extend PBX and desk phone functionality to, and be unified on, mobile phones. Mobile extensions enable mobile business users to have full desk phone functionality anywhere, including single number ring and identity, as well as common features such as transfer, conferencing, and voice mail.

Agito and DiVitas offer alternative FMC solutions and they have slightly different strategies. (V2.0 of the DiVitas Mobile UC interface is shown at right) Theyre US companies, but both recognize the importance of Europe. Agito is about to enter the market place; DiVitas has been active and successful for some time. Agito focuses on eFMC (the e is for enterprise) and they see UC as providing a broad framework for enterprise applications.

Pejman Roshan, VP of Marketing at Agito said, Our FMC solution integrates into PBXs without tampering with the desk phones. It provides applications for our mobile society while also ensuring that mobile calls and data applications are connected transparently to the best possible network--be it the cellular network, 3G, business Wi-Fi, public Wi-Fi, or home networks.

DiVitas has been focusing on both the SMB and enterprise space, and now they have started marketing their own UC client, as shown here. Details were not available at the time of publication, but No Jitter did get an advance shot of the UI. The ability to meet the needs of both sectors comes from the fact that the companys server software is hardware independent, so it runs on inexpensive desktop servers as well as enterprise platforms having redundant power supplies, disk drives, etc.

CISCO AND NOKIA

These two 800-lb gorillas have been marketing a Mobile Business Solution for some time and at the end of April the two companies issued an update, which stated that there were more than 100 customers in commercial use and more than 600 customers in trials for Mobile Business Solution from Cisco and Nokia. This is the spin: the solution extends the rich Cisco Unified IP Phone capabilities to Nokia E series smartphones over Cisco Unified Wireless Networks to offer users a seamless mobile experience in the enterprise environment and public cellular networks. Note that SCCP (aka Skinny) is employed rather than SIP.

That was an FMC-centric statement, but this solution should not be seen as an FMC solution. However, since the PBX (CallManager) sees call phones as regular extensions mobile UC is a given: the server knows the presence status of all the devices on the corporate network. In addition the solution features mobile VPN and secure remote access.

CONCLUSIONS

Mobile UC should not be seen as a subset of desktop UC. Mobility in the average workforce is around 40%, and the figure is rising year on year, in line with improved services. This means that the mobile variant leverages the value of the various UC applications and in some cases it is driving up the implementation of this technology at the desktop level.

FMC is the service that enables mobile UC: without it, information on the presence and availability of colleagues and friends would be lost when transitioning between wide area networks (GSM) and local area networks (Wi-Fi). However, we now have a broadband data service (HSPA), and this will be followed by WiMAX and LTE (Long Term Evolution). One upcoming challenge is therefore the ability to retain UC functionality when employing one of these new air interfaces. Its doable: phones have powerful computing resources and Moores Law will ensure that they become more powerful in future. And the June 24 news that Nokia will buy the 52% of Symbian it doesn't already own, and then give it away as an open source operating system, also is a significant leap forward.