Mobility Shines at VoiceConMobility Shines at VoiceCon

VoiceCon ProgramWe are expecting a surge of interest in mobility. Last time around, our mobility sessions were packed and the interest appears to go on unabated. Here's a quick rundown on what we have planned.

VoiceCon ProgramIn the lead up to VoiceCon next week, we are expecting a surge of interest in mobility. Last time around, our mobility sessions were packed and the interest appears to go on unabated. Here's a quick rundown on what we have planned."Integrating Mobility and UC Vendor Panel" Tuesday March 23, 2:00 to 5:00PM This is our feature event in the mobility track where we have 10 different vendors propose and support a mobility solution for 1,000 users distributed across 27 locations. The company description is the same as in Marty Parker's session "Comparing Unified Communications Options: Who's Offering What?" (Monday 2 to 5:00PM), though we expand the mobility requirements to include local as well as wide area mobile users. To make the exercise as realistic as possible, we require that the vendors include the cost of the network services involved along with the hardware and licenses required.

The RFP we distributed was designed to allow the widest range of possible solutions including cellular-based mobile UC, dual mode, unlicensed mobile access (UMA), voice over WLANs, and DECT; virtually every option was proposed by one vendor or another in some very creative arrangements. Participating in the panel will be: Aastra, Alcatel-Lucent, Avaya, Cisco, IBM, Mitel, NEC America, RIM, ShoreTel, and Siemens Enterprise Communications Group.

So if you are considering mobility as part of your IP PBX or unified communications deployment, you can get a real in-depth view not only of what the vendors have to offer and what it costs, but how creatively they can craft a mobility solution.

Choosing the Right Mobile Device Ecosystem Monday March 22, 10:00 to 10:45AM As smartphones proliferate in the enterprise, users are faced with major decisions regarding which mobile devices and operating systems they will support. With the introduction of wildly popular options like Apple's iPhone and the growing population of Android-based devices, IT departments are under increasing pressure to add these to their list of supported devices. However, enterprise requirements for mobile devices go beyond "nifty apps" to include security, manageability, and support for line-of-business applications (not to mention cost!), so the decisions are far more complex than what we find in the consumer market.

This session will feature a description of the overall areas we have to address in mobile device selection and a discussion of how these can be addressed in an enterprise environment. Participants will include RIM, who manufactures the BlackBerry solution. and Siemens, who will be talking about the Sybase mobile device management system they offer. Deep Dive: Optimizing Enterprise Mobility Thursday March 25, 8:00 to 9:45AM I will be conducting this tutorial in conjunction with Steve Leaden, President of Leaden Associates, and we will be exploring the major issues facing enterprise buyers in the mobility space today. The topics span mobility policy options, cost control, technical developments, and strategies to support the mobilization of unified communications.

We will look at the strategic developments in the mobility space, the important developments we are seeing, and the range of management and policy issues that will have to be addressed. The topics will include the importance of mobility in UC, the move to 4G cellular, planning for 802.11n, voice over wireless LAN versus DECT for local mobility, fixed-mobile convergence options, and policy issues like corporate versus individual responsible cellular plans and support for employee-owned devices.

If you have responsibility for or a genuine interest in mobility, this session can give you a good foundation in the issues we are wrestling with today and some solid guidance going forward.

Those are the formal sessions, but we are also doing two early morning Coffee Talk sessions on mobility:

* Mobility and Unified Communications--Monday 9:00 to 9:45AM * Options for Local Mobility--Tuesday 8:00 to 8:45AM

Coffee Talk sessions are open discussions on specific issues that affect enterprise buyers. While we do allow vendors to participate, they have to identify themselves as vendors and they don't get to dominate the discussion. The real goal is to provide a forum for users to exchange their views and strategies on a range of mobility topics.

While we don't have an "agenda", I come prepared with a list of discussion topics. In the "Mobility and Unified Communications" session, we'll be talking about major policy and strategy issues involved in mobilizing UC. For example, can we really mobilize UC if the installation involves installing a client on the user's smartphone and it's a user-owned device? What do we do if they leave the company? Should we stay with the traditional corporate responsible cellular plans or move to individual responsible or some hybrid (e.g. corporate negotiated/individual paid)? We've done this session at past VoiceCon's, and it's always been thought provoking.

In the "Options for Local Mobility" Coffee Talk we have a lot of options to discuss. The overarching issue is do we go for a public or a private network approach. The cellular carriers are offering distributed antenna systems to enterprise customers to improve coverage in large facilities, and femtocells for smaller ones; T-Mobile is pushing dual mode UMA. At the same time we have voice over WLAN and DECT-based solutions, but the cellular carriers are aiming to supplant those. We'll be talking about which is the best and cheapest option, what the trade-offs are, and comparing notes with those who have deployed the various solutions.

All told, we have a lot to do in the mobility space, and it will all be on the table at VoiceCon. For those who are attending, I hope you find your way to some of our sessions, and from those who will be monitoring the developments from afar, please feel free to email me ([email protected]) with any topics you'd like me to bring up.VoiceCon ProgramWe are expecting a surge of interest in mobility. Last time around, our mobility sessions were packed and the interest appears to go on unabated. Here's a quick rundown on what we have planned.