How Mobility Fits with Unified Communications

Technology offers a lot in helping us to do business better. When Unified Communications (UC) first came onto the market with better enterprise capabilities compared to older digital services, there was the idea that everything would be ‘integrated’ on a single platform. But that was before the advances of mobility and the increasing demands of needing applications on mobile devices. Now, it’s really about how to ‘integrate’ mobile applications with UC systems.  We suggest there is no such thing as a single platform, unless you stay within the walls of an enterprise.

If you’re mobile, it’s now a matter of deciding which mobile applications need to be managed and integrated with the company’s enterprise systems. It’s not one platform but rather an integration of capabilities that need to be presented to the user in an uncomplicated way. And it’s becoming a more pressing issue for the IT Team in delivering solutions to their employees. If not addressed now, it could be a real headache later.

You have major vendors like Microsoft, Cisco, Avaya, and Mitel selling Unified Communications (UC) platforms. At the same time, you have the explosion of smartphones and tablets and the thousands of applications that are being used on these devices, often without rules or procedures from enterprise. Add to this the social media revolution for communicating and also the web-based collaboration tools that are being offered. Then there’s IM, video conferencing and don’t forget the cloud-based services that are vying for your documents and even your intelligence gathering and the need to secure all of this. How does mobility fit in with all of this? It’s an integrated solution specific to your organization.

The real challenge facing IT teams today is how to properly support the mobility aspect of this integration requirement. The needs and tools for doing business when mobile are very different than the tools offered within an enterprise environment. And decisions made will be different for small to medium size organizations than they are for larger businesses. It’s not a solution to have a cell phone just as an extension to your business line. Nor is it trying to impose policies and procedures for adding tablets to the workplace without first understanding what employees use them for. Companies need a tight coupling of smartphone and tablet applications and they need to be secured.

If done properly, your solutions will allow users access to the information they need and the ability to communicate anytime and anywhere with the people they need to talk to in an easy way. If done properly, including appropriate policies and security, your company will be in a position to save money, be responsive to your customers, retain employees by giving them the right tools to do their business and differentiate yourself from competitors. It’s not a problem if you seize this opportunity now to improve your company’s ability to bring all relevant information together and easily for users. In fact, it could be your main differentiator in the marketplace.