How to transform the business using mobile UC

The appeal of unified communications has been the convergence of all business communication applications across the range of enterprise interfaces, including the PC, telephone, Web, and mobile. But, a recent Forrester survey revealed that whilst European and North American enterprise telecom and research decision-makers are interested in deploying business telephone features on employees' mobile devices - with more than half of decision-makers rating this as an important or very important capability, mobile UC adoption remains embryonic.

However, when asked about their plans for mobile UC adoption, these same decision-makers are in a holding pattern, with 44 per cent indicating they are interested however have no plans to implement mobile UC, and another 22 per cent not interested at all in mobile UC. Organisations are either taking a wait-and-see approach to how the mobile UC market will unfold, or simply lack vision on how mobility can impact their business. Either way, enterprises that don't empower remote and mobile workers with the same or comparable UC productivity afforded fixed on-campus employees will miss a key play at transforming the business.

What started with the integration of enterprise email into the mobile devices has developed into a request for access to enterprise applications. As employees continue to work on the go, demand will ultimately require full enterprise UC integration, including presence, instant messaging, conferencing - covering audio, video, and Web - and support for Wi-Fi-based enterprise services. Nevertheless while mobile carriers seem primarily focused on the consumer market and UC vendors continue to offer applications with limited mobile functionality, infrastructure and operations professionals have to prepare the business to harness the potential of mobile UC integration today. How? By following a simple two-step process.

The workforce to achieve their job objectives

Enabling mobile UC is about empowering the workforce to achieve their job objectives, whether at large within the campus, at home, or on the go at a customer site, hotel, or airport. Knowing where people are can help identify what technologies are available and which would be the most appropriate to promote and meet their business productivity needs. I&O teams must take the necessary step of segmenting the remote and mobile workforce to understand the needs of where employees work and better define what technologies are needed to promote their productivity.

I&O teams must consider the technological prerequisites for broader adoption of mobile UC, which are just now coming into play. Current third-generation and emerging fourth-generation mobile broadband networks augment bandwidth and supply wider coverage for network operators across the globe. To boot, 802.11-based WLANs are faster and boast longer ranges. WLAN and Wi-Fi have become nearly universal in the enterprise, and we're seeing a growth in public hotspots that help bridge connections in between. This ubiquitous mobility provides the "meta" network required for mobile UC to take flight.

In fact, as highlighted in Forrester's book Empowered, all customer-facing employees must be equipped with the ability to solve customer challenges. Many employees already use UC functionality on their personal mobile devices and are now asking for comparable functionality in their work environments to build business solutions to solve customer problems. To safeguard against that trend is not only futile, it's counterproductive. To better prepare for that mobilisation of UC functionality in the enterprise, I&O professionals will need to: