Inside DiVitas

Finding the 25th Hour

by Prashant Chauhan

You know the Silicon Valley high-tech worker bees - well, I might be a good, or should I rather say a bad, example of that. You know, the type that works at a cool start-up like DiVitas and thinks he needs to be at work round-the-clock to make sure the world gets its "Mobile" phones converged with its "Fixed" phones. Or, to be technically correct, with its "less mobile" phones.

So, I got used to being at work all day and well into the night and to hearing the complaints from my friends and family that they hardly get to see me or talk to me.  Until the day our management decided that we need to "eat our own dog food". Well, it wasn't just food, I must say - it was more like a DiVitas Dog Treat :).

We installed the DiVitas Convergence solution in-house with the DiVitas server running in our corporate network, and the DiVitas client running on the Nokia E-series handsets that all the employees got.

How did that help me? Well, I no longer needed to be at my office to make and receive all of my work calls. With some very useful features provided by the DiVitas Server – like simultaneous ringing and having the ability to toggle between a deskphone and handset combined with Seamless Roaming and Handoff – I could now be reached anywhere, any time with a single number.

Imagine this: We have an important demo going on at a customer site and I am on the phone with our sales/support engineer (known as “Win-Win”) to make sure the demo goes smooth. Win-Win has called me from his DiVitas mobile phone using my 4-digit office extension, and when both my handset and my deskphone rang, I choose to pick up the call on my deskphone.

Now, while Win-Win and I were in middle of troubleshooting something while talking, I get a call from my High-Command - that's my wife. I was reminded that I am running late for a party and should have been home long ago. So, what was I to do? Well, it's quite simple with the DiVitas solution: I toggle my call with Win-Win to my handset (now using Voice over WiFi on my DiVitas mobile phone), pick up my stuff and walk out of the office.

My VoWiFi call with Win-Win gets seamlessly handed off to Cellular before I reach the parking lot. Eventually, it gets handed off back to WiFi (seamlessly of course!) once I reach home, and I finish the rest of the conversation without missing the party!

So, finally I found an answer to Merovingian's question from Matrix Reloaded: "Who has time? Who has time? But then if we do not ever take time, how can we ever have time?"

Well, I just have my 25th hour in a day by using our DiVitas solution, and I am no Neo ;)

I’m a believer: Day in the life of a mobile-convergence end user

by Charisma Machado

I am the Western Region Territory Manager for DiVitas Networks and wear different sales hats; channel sales, direct sales and technology partner sales, so I always need to be available. Furthermore, I need to be able to place a call and receive a call no matter where I am, my home included, leveraging WiFi to save my company money and to practice what I preach. I love, love, love the Nokia E-series handsets and currently use the E61i. I never thought I could possibly love a piece of technology to the point of wanting to burst with excitement when I’m pitching our solution. Our technology really works!

The DiVitas client on the Nokia E-Series handsets is an UNBEATABLE combination. I have replaced my desktop phone with the E61/ E61i and use it for phone calls (leveraging our WLAN here at DiVitas), checking email and checking my calendar. Eating the DiVitas dog food is key to being able to have a true user experience so that I can speak intelligently to our prospects.

In addition to being part of the DiVitas case study, there have been many cases where our solution has helped make me be more available, responsive and productive. Add to that, it helps me sell while I’m speaking with someone on the phone. I have booked many meetings by simply being on the phone and then walking out of the WiFi area and back to show my prospect in real-time that this technology is real and it works. Just this morning I established a call in the cellular network to an interested prospect in Arizona, got in my car, drove to DiVitas, came to my desk and the call handed off automatically and seamlessly to WiFi, and I didn’t have to do anything to make that happen.

At the end of our discussion I said, “I just want to highlight that I returned your call while I was in the car from the cellular network and now I’m at my desk at DiVitas on WiFi. You probably had no idea the call switched over … and notice the call didn’t drop.” He was so impressed and I now have a meeting with him and his team to discuss a pilot.

Alice in Wireless-LAND

by Rich Watson

My conference call at 2:00pm was important.  However, my morning had been so impacted by other meetings, that I had missed lunch and was feeling a little faint.  My last meeting ended only minutes before my scheduled two o’clock was to start – how was I going to keep my schedule yet get some much needed lunch? Not a problem with my DiVitas unwired phone. 

I called into the conference bridge as I was leaving the office, heading for the coffee shop.  Because I was still in the office WiFi range, the call was originated over WiFi and using the IVR interface, I successfully logged into the bridge as I exited the building.  I began the 2-block walk to the coffee shop and, while talking with the call participants, my phone roamed from the office WiFi to the free metropolitan WiFi.  Cool!  The call continued without the others knowing I was on the move and headed toward my lunch and coffee.  Before I got to my destination, my phone decided to roam again, this time to the cellular network (there are spotty WiFi coverage areas in the public space caused by RF shadows from buildings or other possible interferences. Fortunately, my DiVitas phone is always alert and will seek out and roam to the best service that provides the best voice quality. This is an automatic process and I don’t have to do a thing).

Once inside my favorite coffee shop, I muted the call while I placed my espresso and sandwich order, but while I was listening to the dialog; my phone roamed to the coffee shop’s free WiFi hotspot because it was the strongest signal available and afforded the most cost-effective connection (free!). I settled down at my window table, un-muted the call, and joined the conversation while sipping my coffee. After a few minutes, I got a local alert that my phone had roamed to cell again. I hadn’t moved, but most likely what happened was someone had launched a high I/O demand application (like down loading a movie … it’s summertime and the place was crawling with off-duty students) and caused the WiFi quality to deteriorate.  My call was sustained without dropping and without any loss of quality. 

My call was still in progress as I finished my coffee and sandwich, so I began my trek back to the office. The two blocks back were uneventful as far as the call was concerned, but my phone roamed back into the metro WiFi service as I proceeded. I re-entered the office as we were nearing the end of the call, but not before the phone roamed seamlessly back into the office WiFi network (where we began). The agenda of the call complete and all action items assigned, I terminated my connection to the bridge.

The DiVitas unwired phone let me meet my two objectives during this crunch time:  (1) be an active participant on a critical corporate conference call and (2) get lunch.  Without this technology being available, I had only three choices open to me:  (1) miss the call and get lunch; (2) make the call and be hungry; or (3) make the call with cell phone and rack up lots of costly minutes. 

DiVitas made it possible to achieve the best of all possible scenarios.

Voice Over WiFi gives me work-life balance

by Dan Greenwell

I'm what you call a late adopter, of new technology that is.  I didn't own a VCR until 1988, a CD player until 1995, or a cell phone until 2002, and I'm still using a pre-360 Xbox. I still don't own an iPod, let alone an iPhone. My tardiness to new technology is ironic, given that I document cutting-edge high-tech products for a living. Maybe it's because I'm skeptical that any new product will actually enhance my life all that much or maybe I'm just cheap (my wife would likely affirm the latter). 

So even though my job is to write the DiVitas MMC solution documents, I wasn't the earliest adopter of the technology for my own use. Sure, the various status icons and feature tabs had quickly become my daily companions, but at the end of the day, the handset running the DiVitas client software stayed on my desk--until the latest software release (1.3.2), that is. This is the release when I participated in testing the product, an effort that included making a few work-related calls over the weekend (in a startup company, unconventional work hours are not exclusive to sales people and security guards).

So while testing, I was recently able to participate in a Saturday conference call with the product management team from my dining room table. I wasn't wearing a bathrobe and bunny slippers, but I could have. Even better, as I reported on the quality of the calls I'd made earlier that day, I was able to watch my two granddaughters playing in the garden. They waved and I waved back, and that's when it hit me--the great thing about mobility is that you really can be available and productive, without having to give up the other important things in life.

Seamless mobility isn't just about being able to continue a phone call when you leave your WiFi network. It's about being able to do your job and still maintain the continuity of your life. Of course, it doesn't hurt any that the call was over my home WiFi and didn't put one extra red cent into a cellular carrier's pocket!