It recently occurred to me how primitive enterprise communications systems were during the height of the “dot-com” era just 10 years ago.  It is amazing that any work was done in a timely fashion when only those on the bleeding edge of technology were equipped with two-way pagers, analog cell phones, a Palm Pilot for calendar and contacts and a laptop.  Forget about trying to find a WiFi hotspot; the key to mobile e-mail was finding an available phone line for your computer’s 56Kb modem.

Today’s well-equipped mobile worker carries unified enterprise communications technology that consolidates every channel of interaction on a single mobile device.  Even better, the mobile platforms are not a poor substitute for the systems that are connected with wires at the office. They provide identical and in many cases improved capabilities. The enterprise communications delivery restriction that in the past required connection to copper wiring has been replaced by the search for secure wireless networks with adequate bandwidth. The industry term for this evolution is fixed-mobile convergence.

There are a number of infrastructure technology advancements that have made mobile unified communications possible.  IP-capable voice systems, e-mail servers linked with voicemail, instant messaging and video conference tools are all evolving to support common protocols, most notably Session Initiation Protocol or SIP. At the same time, network technology has evolved so that connection, security and throughput are in place to support unified communication on LAN, WiFi and cellular networks.

To put these capabilities in perspective, consider the business manager who is away from her office on the way to meet important customers.  A call arrives on her office phone extension that is automatically bridged to her PDA Smartphone because the caller ID is registered in her phone extension’s VIP list.  The caller points out a critical issue that has just come up in another project.  While talking to the client, the manager looks up her project team’s availability and sees that the project manager is on his phone.  She sends an IM and asks the PM to end his current call and join her conference call in 30 seconds.  Without dropping the customer call she joins the PM on the conference call using software-based softphone features on her PDA.  At the conclusion of the conversation, a followup meeting is scheduled and sent from her PDA.  Before leaving her car and attending her scheduled meeting, she changes her presence indicator to do not disturb so that her team will know she is in a meeting with clients.

As scenarios like this are replicated across your customer-facing organization, it is easier to understand why the time and money needed to build infrastructure that will support the complexity of mobile unified communications are easily justified.  There are opportunities to displace or avoid costs incurred to support legacy systems.  For example cellular charges can be avoided by providing workers with dual mode phones that connect to WiFi networks when a corporate access point is in range.

The biggest payback for unified mobile communications will typically be found in areas of improved productivity and business responsiveness.  Quantifying this value for each business and industry will provide different sources of return.

For individuals, the trend toward using one communication device is obvious and appealing.  However, with all of the device and network choices available, the opportunities for corporate policy conflicts and management challenges are increasing.  For example, if the unified mobile infrastructure is built with a specific cellular network or a specific handheld device for sound technical reasons,  will end user requests for exceptions be allowed?   In scenarios where mobile phones are configured with corporate data that are centrally controlled, or where remote management tools can erase the memory of specific devices if they’re lost, it may be impractical to allow exceptions that cannot be managed.

Changes in user behavior will be needed as well.  For 20 years I have routinely changed voicemail greetings every day and updated e-mail out-of-office messages when on vacation.  In the new world of instant availability users will need to manage their “presence” more frequently and allow systems to change their presence indicator in real time; for example, “I’m on the phone right now, but you can send me an instant message.”

I wonder if the level of responsiveness and availability afforded by unified mobile communications, if magically available 10 years ago, would have prevented some of the “dot-com”  companies I interacted with then from being “dot-gone” today? 

		Robert Crane is a network solutions business development manager for Strategic Products and Services.