Mobile Unified Communications (Mobile UC) to carriers: Let’s make love not war

Rich Watson

Trade show panels can be very lively, and the Convergence: Technologies and Strategies panel at this year’s Interop Las Vegas was no exception.

It was a full house and there was a steady stream of questions coming from the audience i.e. “When are products available and how do they differ?” DiVitas and an enterprise-FMC vendor we shared the stage with were quite vocal about our respective solutions approaches, while our counterparts (Cisco and Strata8 Networks) were pretty quiet. Cisco barely said anything, and oddly, didn’t even mention its Interop announcement with Nokia on Mobile Unified Communications.

For its part, Strata8 didn’t get far with its argument, but it did spark quite a reaction from the enterprise contingent. Speaking on behalf of the carriers, Strata8 argued that deploying femtocells to improve in-building cell signal would ultimately lighten the load of the enterprise. The logic behind that statement? Mobile communications would be improved and yet the carriers would be doing all of the heavy lifting because they would manage the mobile infrastructure.

Strata8 also implied that Mobile UC’s enterprise approach to mobilizing the workforce is too complex.

The enterprise contingent countered that argument, saying that an enterprise approach makes more sense because it takes away absolute control from the carrier. Essentially, Mobile UC is a real business tool vs. just an extension of the cell phone.

As for complexity? Mobile UC’s mantra is just the opposite (it reduces complexity). Adding Mobile UC to your WLAN environment is just an incremental adjustment to what you already have. Adding this on top is simpler than you think.

While the theme of the panel maintained a distinct carrier vs. enterprise tone, in the real world, there is a lot more to be said on the positive side about the carrier’s role as far as Mobile UC goes.

There is a golden opportunity for carriers who partner with companies like DiVitas, and this opportunity goes well beyond just voice & email. I’m talking about two new killer applications called Mobile Presence and Mobile IM.

These virgin technologies are key components of Mobile UC – and they both require a data plan. This translates into a new revenue stream for carriers, which have nearly saturated the market for mobile voice and email.

Here’s the logic behind this one. Presence is the broadcasted state of availability, and it helps people make better decisions about how and when to contact a colleague, a customer, a partner, etc. And if two people are available by IM, they are able to communication efficiently, in real-time. Give Presence and IM a mobility component, as we’ve done with the DiVitas solution, and you have one very powerful tool that businesses need today, and which must be delivered over a carrier’s data network.

People don’t want to waste time playing telephone tag, so Presence and IM (and that data plan) will get used a lot. Hopefully this opportunity will ring true for carriers soon, and we will begin to see more public displays of partnerships than adversarial sniping among carriers and Mobile UC vendors.