Mobile UC 101

DiVitas Enterprise Social Networking takes disparate, but familiar, enterprise mobility components and binds them together to affordably create a highly mobile workforce.

The DiVitas Mobile Unified Communications (Mobile UC) uses the collaboration and productivity capabilities of Enterprise 2.0 (Mobile Presence and Status) and unifies them with communications apps (voice and mobile Instant Messaging (mobile IM)) on a smartphone.

All of these apps tie in with the mobilized deskphone number, so each enterprise mobility function can be performed as one click from the smarpthone interface. They combine to create a secure social networking experience and an affordably mobile workforce.

Current Analysis analyst Brad Shimmin was among the first in a batch of experts trying out DiVitas’ newly released web client. While our web client runs on all of the popular smartphones, Brad’s device of choice is the iPhone. And all he had to do to get started was fire up his browser and punch in his password.

Among the things Brad liked about the DiVitas web client is its quick response time – after all, apps that don’t live up to their promise are among the chief complaints among iPhone users and DiVitas claims to offer real-time mobile communications.

“I have used a lot of interfaces and this is really quick and responsive,” says Brad, explaining that he was impressed by the fact that he was able to easily switch from an IM chat session to a voice call without the delay of changing modes. “I found the switchover to be really slick because it didn’t force me to jump around and leave my address book and look you up.”

Brad also liked the way the app takes advantage of familiar iPhone features and functions already familiar to iPhone users because “it utilizes the UI … not the symbols, but the contrivances that we understand very clearly.”

Although Brad communicated back and forth with the DiVitas team during his trial, he saw how an enterprise social networking application and integrated business number could help workgroups communicate more efficiently.

“I have a common work scenario in which I work with a team people and it is very important to be able to pull them together to solve a problem in real-time,” he said. “Unlike just a chat program with Presence, such as Yahoo messenger, this actually ties that chat to additional forms of communication – such as a business number – that are real-time communication tools.”

He explains that tying the application with a business number is a unique approach that gets around a lot of the problems that you see with web-based apps on mobile devices. “Normally whenever you do that with today’s smartphones you are breaking that UI and forcing users to jump between apps on their mobile devices.”

Brad described the exhaustive steps he goes through to contact team members, highlighting the problem DiVitas solves. “Typically if I’m sitting at my desk, I would look people up on Skype to see if they are available to chat, and if they don’t answer me I would go to my phone book would call, and if didn’t get them that way I would email them and ask for a shout back, and then I would try their mobile,” he says. “What DiVitas gives you is the escalation opportunities within one source.”

In contrast, with DiVitas, Brad could simply pick up his iPhone, scroll through his list of contacts, read the individual Presence and status updates … and then use the touch-dial pad to chat or call his colleague.

“That’s exactly the point of Presence. You want to be able to unify communications.”

DiVitas was recently featured in this local (San Francisco Bay Area) news segment, Study: Bay Area and India growing economic ties.

Enterprise Social Networking is an emerging mobile-communications technology that leverages business voice along with Enterprise 2.0 capabilities on a smartphone to connect colleagues on the first try. In making people more reachable, it helps eliminate the time-consuming and costly business problem of continually missing calls and checking/returning voicemail.

We’ve already seen Web 2.0 apps such as Facebook and Twitter help make consumer-based communication more efficient – hundreds of millions of people worldwide update and broadcast Presence and Status messages (i.e. Twitter's “What are you doing”) to one another daily. With Facebook and Twitter, individuals always know what their friends are doing. And now Enterprise 2.0 is upgrading the consumer-based collaboration tools offered by Social Networking and repurposing them for business to let colleagues stay apprised of one another’s Presence and Status, and therefore their availability.

Enterprise Social Networking takes disparate, but familiar, communications components and ties them together to address worker productivity problems. It uses the collaboration and productivity capabilities of Enterprise 2.0 (Presence and Status) and unifies them with communications apps (voice and IM) on a mobile phone. It wraps these capabilities around a deskphone number – the legacy PBX number – which has also been mobilized as business voice onto the same mobile phone. And it ties all of these applications – Social Networking, business voice (deskphone) and IM – to a directory that is easily accessible from the smartphone interface.

Mobile Presence Makes Every Call Count

Being able to first check a colleague’s Presence from a smartphone, before initiating any communication, is the best way to increase the probability of connecting on the first try.

For example, let’s say Joe wants to contact his boss, Mary. He would first check Mary’s Presence icon from his smartphone and note that she is “available by text only.” And he would additionally see that Mary’s Status message says “in a meeting until 2pm.”

Instead of having his call go directly to voicemail and waiting until 2pm for a possible voice response from his Mary, Joe would take the “text-only” cue and send his boss a brief IM (directly from his phone-based contact list). Mary can then discreetly read and respond to Joe’s IM from her smartphone, without interrupting his meeting.

Under this scenario, there are no missed calls; no cell minutes wasted leaving/retrieving/answering voicemail; no interrupted meetings; and the communication between Joe and boss, Mary, is executed in a timely manner.

Here’s what an Enterprise Social Networking-enabled smartphone would look like. It would have:

•    A customizable Status message to broadcast exactly what an individual is doing and if they are reachable. Being able to show a Status message such as “at the airport for 5pm flight to NY” speaks volumes when needing to let authorized colleagues know an individual’s whereabouts.

•    A Presence icon to broadcast an individual’s availability to their entire community (users strictly within the defined organization). One glance at the smartphone-based directory lets all members of the community see who is available (by voice and/or text) or unavailable at any given moment.

•    IM so that colleagues can discreetly send each other brief text messages – a thrifty alternative to using cell minutes when a voice call is not appropriate, convenient or necessary.

•    Voice – communication by voice is preferred over text in certain situations.

•    Mobilized deskphone - carries the corporate phone number (and caller ID) and enables corporate PBX features (extension-dialing, call transfer, hold, etc.)


Using Enterprise Social Networking, organizations can create a secure, controlled community where users make informed decisions before connecting. This results in fewer missed calls, lower mobile expenses and greatly improved productivity.  

“After all these years, even for those who haven't been paying attention, mobility is finally getting interesting!

Craig Mathias’ words, not mine, but I couldn’t agree more. These 113 characters sum up Craig’s final thoughts in his NetworkWorld blog,  Redefining Unified Communications - DiVitas Changes the Game.

Covering DiVitas’ recent launch in which our enterprise social networking software now runs as a web-client on iPhone, Blackberry and Android smartphones, Craig writes,

“I noted a while ago that the future of enterprise communications is in social networking. It's easy to see why this should be: e-mail has become a vast wasteland of spam and other irritations, IM is increasingly in popularity among essentially all classes of enterprise users, and there's a fundamental requirement for file (and many other forms of) sharing within the closed-user-group paradigm. Closing the user base keeps the riff-raff and especially spam and other distractions out, and also enhances integrity and expands the range of possible functions while maintaining security and enhancing ease-of-use and productivity.

And that's where convergence/mobile unified communications pioneer is DiVitas Networks is going with their recent announcement, which also pursues one of my favorite directions (and a natural fit and requirement for social networking of any form regardless) - Web services. There's no software to load here, and instant support of a broad range of key handsets. Client behavior is uniform across handsets, minimizing the training and support load and maximizing flexibility. No new apps need to be developed. And a single LDAP directory can be used for all enterprise communications functions, meaning everything works the same whether at one's desk or out and about. This is a great addition to the overall power of mobility, and builds upon DiVitas' previous convergence and mobile unified communications capabilities.”

I love it when experts like Craig get what we do, but of course he’s not alone. A few other examples of digested analysis of our Mobile Unified Communications (Mobile UC) web-client launch: 

100,000 iPhone Apps. Congrats. Now Add Things Businesses Care About (Ted Schadler, Forrester)


• DiVitas's Mobile UC Now Available on the Latest Devices (Ted Stevenson,VoIPPlanet)
   
• DiVitas Ups the Mobile UC Ante (Bob Emmerson, TMCnet)
   
• DiVitas extends mobile collaboration to iPhone, Android, RIM (Stephen Lawson, InfoWorld)
   
• DiVitas Offers Handset-Agnostic Collaboration (Marin Perez, InformationWeek)

The debate about handset support in the Mobile UC space has officially been put to rest, according to a recent VoIPPlanet article covering DiVitas’ BYO (Bring Your Own) phone launch.

DiVitas’ Mobile Unified Communications (Mobile UC) solution is now available as a nimble web-client that can run on any browser-enabled smartphone, such as iPhone, Blackberry and Android

In his article DiVitas's Mobile UC Now Available on the Latest Devices, VoIPPlanet’s Ted Stevenson writes:

“DiVitas Networks today made an announcement that pretty much sews up [the number of supported handsets] competition for good (or perhaps makes it irrelevant going forward).”

He explains, “the flashy way to state what they've done would be something along the lines of: 'DiVitas's technology now works with the iPhone, BlackBerry, and Android phone—not to mention the desktop PC.' While those are the big attention-getters, in reality what they've done is to make their technology compatible with any device that runs a Web browser—a number that's growing every day.

He quotes DiVitas CEO Vivek Khuller as saying, the market reality that set the company on the development path that ended with today's announcement was the overwhelming predominance of what they are calling "Bring Your Own" phones. "We [started with] the notion that the mobile devices would be bought by the enterprise and distributed to the employees," Khuller told EnterpriseVoIPplanet. "The reality is that people pick their own phones. People pick their own plans, their own carriers.”

According to Stevenson, DiVitas has answered the call for a new approach to enterprise mobility. “Rather than negotiating with owners of 'closed,' proprietary operating systems in order to gain the access necessary to write native applications for more devices, why not build a way to accomplish the same end using a piece of open technology that's already on the device?

According to Stevenson’s analysis of DiVitas’ BYO phone announcement: “Not only does this vastly enlarge the potential market universe that DiVitas can address (nice for them), it makes the benefits of mobile unified communications (cost savings and enhanced communications efficiency), available to many kinds of organizations that would be unable (or simply unwilling) to try to impose on their end users the kind device uniformity that would have been required heretofore.

Citing an example of the perfect BYO customer, Stevenson quotes Ron Hutchins, CTO of Georgia Institute of Technology, "Universities constitute one of the most diverse handset ecosystems, where IT has minimal control over selection of handsets or carriers by students," he said. "With support for iPhone, Android, and BlackBerry, DiVitas would be able to offer handset and carrier choice that would be very appealing in a college campus environment."

For guests of a casino, the name of the game is getting the most out of your stay. So imagine a scene where a casino’s amenities are directly accessible from a guest’s personal iPhone, Blackberry, Android … or any other web-enabled mobile phone. One tap to the directory displayed on their smartphone and a guest has reached, say, the concierge or the reservation desk at one of the casino’s restaurants.

Next imagine a guest being able to use that same device to see where their friends or family members are located and what they are doing at any given moment. A quick glance at the smartphone interface and guests instantly know which of their party-members are poolside or, say, at the poker table testing their luck.

As futuristic as these on-the-fly conveniences sound, they are available today from casinos that have deployed DiVitas Mobile UC with a goal toward differentiating themselves in the very competitive hospitality market.

Casino guests can simply point their smartphone browser at the Casino’s DiVitas server to gain access to a temporary client – meaning their personal phone is transformed into a hotel guest phone.

The client authorization can be issued by the casino, lasting only for the duration of the guest’s casino stay. Once the guest leaves, the session is terminated. Of course when the guest returns to the casino another day, the client can be reinstated again (on a temporary basis). There is nothing to download, and casino IT is not involved beyond configuration of the DiVitas Mobile Unified Communications (Mobile UC) server.

Guests gain several conveniences with a temporary DiVitas client:
 

• They are able to use their personal smartphone (iPhone, Blackberry, Android, etc.)  to gain a mobilized hotel room phone – they can place and/or receive calls from their hotel room number without being tethered to the hardwired phone.
   
• DiVitas provides one-click access to all resort services from the guest’s personal mobile phone – using the hotel directory that is accessible from their personal phone interface, they can simply touch-dial the iPhone, Blackberry or Android screen to reach the concierge, book tickets for a show or make a dinner or spa reservation.
   
• Guests’ party members stay connected and engaged via voice or IM. Meanwhile, the DiVitas Mobile UC solution's enterprise social networking capabilities let party members tell one another what they are doing and where they are doing it by updating their Mobile Presence (i.e. icon indicating available by IM only) and status (i.e. text reading “at the poker table”).

Casino's also gain a more mobile workforce because staff similarly benefits from the mobile social networking software advantages offered by the DiVitas client. Casinos can use DiVitas to increase staff efficiency by making them continuously reachable. Casino Staff:

• Leverages Mobile Presence and Status to maintain awareness of colleague availability – managers can, for example, quickly find the most available staff member to attend to a guest’s need by scanning Presence and status updates from the mobile phone interface.
   
• Gains a mobilized business number and IM – the mobile user can decide which method of communication (voice or IM) is optimal depending on what is indicated by the colleague they are trying to reach (available by voice, text or Do Not Disturb).
   
• Are made available by a single business number – there is no need to know individual cell phone numbers because all casino workers are reachable by their mobilized casino-business number, and their extensions can be accessed via a directory on the smartphone interface.

I am posting a response to a question I received about federating DiVitas mobile Presence. It was an interesting question and I thought the thread was worthy of a blog post in order to share the information.

Question posted to our Mobile Presence Makes Every Call Count blog: "I certainly agree with the concept of checking "availability" before blindly making a real-time contact. However, how do you do this without “federating” such capabilities across various groups, as opposed to just within a single business organization?"

Answer: Today DiVitas supports checking Mobile Presence and Status before placing a call or sending an IM within a community of users supported by one or more DiVitas servers. In this scenario, each geographic location of a large organization would have its own DiVitas server and would federate with other DiVitas servers within the overall organization.

For example, using our own solution, we at DiVitas federate between our offices in Europe, India, Boston and our Silicon Valley headquarters. I can simply look at the interface on my interface and know what my DiVitas colleagues are up to whether they are working alongside me here in Mountain View, Calif. or they are located in India, Boston or the U.K.

Also, wherever possible, DiVitas takes advantage of existing standards making it a straightforward engineering process to federate DiVitas Mobile Presence with Presence capabilities offered by other popular applications (such as Microsoft OCS, Google, Yahoo, Twitter, Facebook, etc.) Plans are in place to federate to these popular applications through standard interfaces to allow users to go outside of their DiVitas community and view Presence across individual organizations.

Mobile Presence and Status comprise DiVitas’ Enterprise Social Networking capabilities:

• Mobile Presence is displayed on the DiVitas smartphone’s interface as an icon similar to Yahoo IM (showing emoticons to indicate if you are available, not available.) However, DiVitas' Presence icon also shows whether you are reachable by voice or IM chat, or maybe you are temporarily on a call and all together unavailable for communication (in which case Do Not Disturb calls go straight to voicemail.)
   
• Status message is coupled with the Mobile Presence icon on a DiVitas smartphone, providing an additional level of detail to availability about where you are and what you are doing (i.e. at the airport waiting for a 5pm flight.)

A recent Forrester Research report talks about social networking issues that need to be resolved in the face of the skyrocketing use of mobile social networking among consumers – issues that are in fact already being addressed by DiVitas Mobile Unified Communications (Mobile UC) on the enterprise side.

“People have separate identities in each social network they visit,” writes Dan Butcher, the author of a Mobile Marketer article based on Forrester’s findings that states the number of mobile social networking users has doubled in the last six months. Butcher also writes that the future of social networking for consumers will be one where “universal social IDs will enable a portable identity … mobile phones will become the hub of social computing activities—the glue that holds the social graph together.”

I think that’s a smart prediction, especially because DiVitas has already identified and addressed this single-identity need among business social networking users.  

DiVitas’ Enterprise Social Networking platform mobilizes the existing deskphone number to provide Business Voice on a smartphone – and ties it with secure Instant Messaging (IM) and Social Networking (Mobile Presence and Status) to give individuals a single business-number identity. Whether DiVitas users are seated at their desks, roaming the corporate corridors or standing in the security line at the airport, there is just one number by which they can be reached.

• Mobile Presence is displayed on the DiVitas smartphone’s interface as an icon similar to Yahoo IM (showing emoticons to indicate if you are available, not available.) However, DiVitas' Presence icon also shows whether you are reachable by voice or IM chat, or maybe you are temporarily on a call and all together unavailable for communication (in which case Do Not Disturb calls go straight to voicemail.)
   
• Status message is coupled with the Mobile Presence icon on a DiVitas smartphone, providing an additional level of detail to availability about where you are and what you are doing (i.e. at the airport waiting for a 5pm flight).

Indicating the window of opportunity for a call or real-time chat is powerful knowledge and a great contributor in the quest to reduce missed calls and connect on the first attempt. Adding to that, having a single business identity – your moblized business number – eliminates any confusion about the best number to reach and be reached.

Mobile VoIP is a hot commodity despite global economic woes, according to consultancy Research and Markets. This is because the Voice over IP technology reduces telecom costs for companies, even as they invest in their mobile workforce.

The researcher sites “improved technology solutions” as a major factor leading to “a robust VoIP market in recent years.” The researcher is also anticipating growth to continue throughout the year, despite the economic downturn of 2009.

Noting the cost-saving benefits offered by VoIP, Research and Market said, “… while security and reliability concerns still need to be resolved; consumers and business are turning to VoIP in an effort to save costs.”

Continuing, the company noted global market trends, saying, “Japan, China and the USA continue to be some of the world's hottest markets for IP telephony. Over the last couple years, Europe has also become a prime innovator in VoIP services, whether stand-alone, bundled as a triple play offer, or through fixed mobile convergence packages.”

DiVitas’ VoIP solution helps companies reduce their cellular costs by mobilizing the business number onto smartphones in order to make it easier and less expensive for colleagues to reach one another. Companies can leverage DiVitas’ seamless roaming (FMC) to allow VoIP calls to hand off seamlessly between WiFi and cellular networks, which results in substantially reduced cellular costs.

Delivering Mobile UC (deskphone number, social networking, voice and IM) onto smartphones as a Web-based application lets organizations inexpensively transform themselves into a secure collaborative, mobile community.

The business market is currently underserved on both the mobility and social networking fronts –frequently leaving billions of employees out of touch and unproductive. Without mobile phones, colleagues can’t collaborate with one another when they are away from their desk, which makes it difficult to do their jobs. And all too often employees close the mobility gap by using their personal phones for business communication.

The fact is, only 30% of the people using their mobile phone for work get compensated. On the other hand almost everyone is provided a desk phone for use at work.

Given that total mobile market penetration in the US has almost reached 90%, there is a massive benefit to mobilizing existing work deskphones on to smartphones. This will give people single number reach, letting them use the same device to make and receive business and/or personal calls.

By using a Web-based Mobile Unified Communications (Mobile UC) app to deliver deskphone number, social networking (Mobile Presence and Status), voice and IM (mobile Instant Messaging) onto personal smartphones, companies reduce cellular costs while gaining productivity. This is because these businesses gain mobile VoIP while avoid having to buy additional smartphones for non-mobilized employees.

At the same time they have the assurance of enterprise security because the Mobile UC solution is delivered to personal mobile devices as a Web app that is under IT control. Just as with phones on the PBX system, only authorized users with a PBX managed extension or DID can be part of the community.

In addition to mobilizing their deskphone numbers, users have access to social messaging tools that create a collaborative community that is equally secure.

• Mobile Presence is displayed on the phone’s interface (icon similar to Yahoo IM showing a happy face to say if you are available, not available, etc.), which communicates a person’s location, availability, activity and network connectivity. Various Presence components allow people to obtain information about others and use that information to engage in the most efficient and economical way. For example, if I can see via your Presence that you are in London and on cellular, I would much rather IM you than talk (to save on international dialing costs). However, if your Mobile Presence information said that you were on WiFi, I could choose to talk because the call is free and I might prefer a voice conversation.
   
• Status – a Status message is coupled with the Mobile Presence icon to give an additional level of detail to availability about where you are and what you are doing (i.e. at the airport waiting for a 5pm flight).
   
• Secure Social Networking - Similar to corporate email, this is a closed, enterprise 2.0 solution so access is limited to authorized group of people (colleagues within your organization).

Mobile devices by their very nature (first-and-foremost a communications device) are the perfect delivery platform for integrating voice, IM and the deskphone number with secure social networking. Using a Web-based solution, companies can securely mobilize more of their workforce – and realize the benefits of mobile enterprise mobility and collaboration – without purchasing additional phones for every individual.

There is a lot of buzz around Enterprise 2.0 lately, especially with the upcoming Enterprise 2.0 conference in November.  I am particularly interested in the buzz because this is exactly the market DiVitas addresses with our Enterprise Social Networking capability.

It’s important to understand where Web 2.0 leaves off and Enterprise 2.0 begins. According to Forrester, Enterprise 2.0 is a set of collaboration and productivity tools based on the concepts of Web 2.0 (utilized by Facebook, Twitter, etc.), but designed for the enterprise worker. And it’s a market that is expected to grow by several billion dollars over the next four years.

DiVitas’ approach to implementing Enterprise 2.0 is a mobile-communications solution – Enterprise Social Networking – that enables colleagues to connect with one another on the first try.

DiVitas Enterprise Social Networking takes disparate, but familiar, communications components and binds them together to address worker productivity problems. It uses the collaboration and productivity capabilities of Enterprise 2.0 (Presence and Status) and unifies them with communications apps (voice and IM) on a mobile phone.

Further, DiVitas’ Enterprise Social Networking moves the deskphone – the legacy PBX number – onto a smartphone, enabling business voice on a mobile handset. And it ties all of the applications – Social Networking, business voice (deskphone) and IM – to a directory that is easily accessible from the smartphone interface.

In its report Global Enterprise Web 2.0 Market Forecast: 2007 To 2013 Forrester predicts that business spending on Enterprise 2.0 technologies is going to increase dramatically over the next five years. This increase will include more spending on social networking and other tools, with the end result being a global enterprise market of $4.6 billion by the year 2013.

After reading the Forrester report, I fundamentally believe that all that buzz surrounding Enterprise 2.0 and the resulting solutions, such as Enterprise Social Networking, have merit.

Enterprise Social Networking is beginning to rival voice as a must-have app for mobile communications.

Web 2.0 tools such as Twitter and Facebook first gained popularity among consumers as stationary applications. Users share personal information and interact with one another from their computers to stay apprised of where their buddies are and what they are doing.

But along with the recent smartphone craze – a phenomenon that has gripped the mobile phone market since the iPhone was released two years ago – has come demand for mobile phone-access to user-centered, collaborative apps. And Enterprise Social Networking -- Mobile Presence and voice capabilities, which wrap around a business number and mobile  Instant Messaging (IM) and run as an integrated package on a smartphone -- falls squarely in that trend.

In fact, Enterprise Social Networking and voice complement one another to create a perfect mobile-communications application match. Particularly when they integrate tightly with the mobile phone they are running on, and when they tie directly with the business number associated with the end user for single number reach.

DiVitas addresses this business demand head-on with our Enterprise Social Networking solution.

DiVitas uses Mobile Unified Communications (Mobile UC) to mobilize an existing deskphone number and tie it with Enterprise Social Networking, which includes Mobile Presence and Status, on a mobile device, making it easier for individuals to reach one another. With DiVitas, mobile Enterprise 2.0 and business voice capabilities reside side-by-side on a single mobile device. This makes text-based and voice-based communication equally accessible to the mobile user.

DiVitas moves an existing business number to a smartphone by integrating with legacy PBXs, which creates a mobile deskphone. In addition, DiVitas provides directory access to all contacts directly from the smartphone interface. This means all applications within the DiVitas solution – voice, business number, IM and Social Networking capabilities – leverage this integrated directory of contacts.

Consumer Social Networking tools have already laid a Presence-aware foundation that is educating the business community about the value-add of having collaborative apps (i.e. Mobile Presence) in the workplace. Now combining these capabilities with a mobilized business number, to run as an integrated solution on a smartphone – as DiVitas has done – will help employees work more efficiently, and it will affordably improve enterprise mobility.

Samsung, DiVitas Partner to Bring Mobile UC to Windows Mobile Devices

DiVitas and Samsung have partnered on a major innovation for organizations waiting to deploy Mobile UC on a Windows Mobile smartphone. The two companies are working closely together to enhance the APIs in the Samsung Mobile Innovator’s SDK. Now, for the first time, Windows Mobile smartphones will offer a full featured Mobile UC solution. DiVitas is the only Mobile UC solution that provides Enterprise Social Networking capabilities (business voice integrated with Presence, status message and IM). Both GSM and CDMA Windows Mobile devices will now support DiVitas Mobile UC.

DiVitas Teams Up with Value Added Solutions Provider NACR

DiVitas is teaming up with service provider NACR, an Avaya Platinum BusinessPartner and seven-time BusinessPartner of the Year, to offer DiVitas Mobile UC across the U.S. Under the business partnership, NACR (North American Communications Resource, Inc.) and DiVitas have already begun to engage customers in the healthcare, transportation and digital media vertical markets.

This past week I had an awkward personal moment that translated perfectly into in an example of how Mobile Presence makes every business call count.

At about 10:15 P.M. on Tuesday night my doorbell rang and it turned out to be a nightmare come true. At the door were out-of-town relatives dropping by, without notice, on their whirlwind tour of San Francisco. Assuming (incorrectly) the visit was an emergency, I answered the door and let these people in. A regrettable move on my part.

All I could think about during the entire 45 minutes of family bonding was, “This unannounced call would never happen at the office!” And this true is because my co-workers would have first checked my Mobile Presence and Status message, only to realize I was unavailable. Mobile Presence and Status message are key components of the Enterprise Social Networking capability enabled by Mobile Unified Communications (Mobile UC).

In fact, checking Mobile Presence and Status message before making contact with a co-worker has become so ingrained in us at DiVitas, that nobody would dare skip that step – and risk wasting time.

For example: Rather than (1) blind-calling Nancy (who is in a meeting), (2) getting her voicemail, (3) leaving a message on her deskphone and (4) having no idea when I will hear back from her despite the fact that my issue is urgent … I would (1) check her Presence and Status message from my DiVitas smartphone with no requirement of being at my desk, (2) see that she is unavailable and “in a meeting until 2pm” and (3) therefore send an IM briefly relaying important info that she can discreetly read from her DiVitas smartphone without interrupting the meeting.

Given the 40-plus hours I spend at the office each week, checking Presence has become such a habit that I can’t help but find uses for it in everyday life. If only my relatives were using DiVitas too – they would have seen a Presence icon that indicated “unavailable” and a status message that read, “gone to bed!”

Being able to check my colleagues’ Mobile Presence and status message before contacting them is as habit-forming as checking online traffic conditions before getting in my car. Just as I would avoid highway 880 when the Sig Alert website shows congestion, I would choose IM (mobile Instant Messaging) over voice when my colleagues are unavailable for calls.

The common denominator in each of these scenarios – checking traffic online and checking my colleagues’ availability – is that knowledge of a situation breeds efficiency. In fact, I have grown so accustomed to tools that provide that critical prior knowledge, it feels like I can’t be a productive human being without them.

For example, let’s say I need to contact Vivek, my CEO. One glance at my Nokia screen and I’ll know if he’s available, how he’s available, where he is, what he’s doing, etc. While that level of knowledge may sound Big Brotheresque, sharing these details means we colleagues can connect with one another on the first try.

• Looking at Vivek’s Mobile Presence, I see from the smiley face icon that he is available by voice or text, so I can either call or IM him. (I choose IM because I simply need to tell him that our 3pm meeting has been cancelled.)
   
• Reading his Status message, I see that he’s at the airport and catching a 5pm flight to New York – in other words I have a specific window of time when I can reach him before he is incommunicado for several hours. (Hence I know not to reschedule our 3pm meeting for today.)

From a business perspective, I save myself the time and effort of roaming the building looking for people. If I’m offsite, I save my company the expense of wasted cell minutes on missed calls and help reduce cellular costs (and hence overall reduce telecom costs). I am more productive and the cost of supporting my business communications needs has become minimal due to these mobile VoIP capabilities.

Knowledge at a glance is a powerful thing because it helps me make informed decisions throughout the day. After finishing this blog I have to call my doctor’s office to make an appointment. If only I could view the appointment desk’s Presence ahead of time so that I’d know if it’s a good time to call to avoid waiting on hold.

Given my recent blog about being a Twitter Quitter, it’s easy for me to understand why certain organizations – the NFL, ESPN and the Marine Corps to name a few – have suddenly soured on consumer Social Networking tools such as Twitter, Facebook and Myspace.

To name a few recent Social Networking-banning events:

• Wired reports, “The U.S. Marine Corps has banned Twitter, Facebook, MySpace and other social media sites from its networks, effective immediately.”
   
• The New York Times reports, “The N.F.L. has identified the enemy and it is Twitter.”
   
• The New York Times also reports that ESPN is limiting Social Networking after issuing a list of “12 guidelines to its employees about social networking.”

The ticklish issue common to each of these organizations is a matter of information containment: Blasting out your Status worldwide is one thing. But when that status message reveals competitive secrets – or threatens national security – the fun and games are over.

Or so says the hyper-sensitive Marine Corps about the Social Networking trend: “The very nature of SNS [social network sites] creates a larger attack and exploitation window, exposes unnecessary information to adversaries and provides an easy conduit for information leakage that puts OPSEC [operational security], COMSEC [communications security], [and] personnel... at an elevated risk of compromise."

But not all Social Networking tools are created equal.

While Twitter and Facebook are ideal for consumer use (and hence information security breaches), Enterprise Social Networking included in DiVitas Mobile Unified Communications (Mobile UC) is appropriate – and secure -- for the workplace. Organizations deploying DiVitas enjoy the benefit of business voice (deskphone) combined with IM (mobile Instant Messaging) and Social Networking (Mobile Presence and Status message) and placed onto a smartphone – without sacrificing information security.

By limiting access to a specific, and secure, group of people (colleagues within your organization), mobile Enterprise 2.0 leverages Mobile Unified Communications to lets organizations take advantage of the real-time communication benefits provided by social networking without the risk of accidentally leaking sensitive information to the masses. 

In short the enterprise defines the walls of the social networking community.   

Translation: If the troops were to use DiVitas Enterprise Social Networking instead of Twitter or Facebook for secure collaboration, the Marine Corps could set aside fears of security breaches. Same goes with the NFL and ESPN – those Status blasts would only be shared with colleagues within the organization.  At the same time, individuals in the organization are able to take advantage of the secure collaboration and sharing offered by social media.

Addressing the need for Enterprise 2.0, Mobile UC:

• Uses Mobile Presence to broadcast your status to your entire network. One glance at the directory displayed on your phone and you can see who is available (by voice and/or text) or unavailable at any given moment.
   
• Has a customizable Status message to broadcast exactly what you are doing at a given moment – a must-have when you need to know if a colleague is reachable. Personal Status messages such as “in a foxhole”, or, “about to take an ice bath for my knee injury” speak volumes when you need to let colleagues know your whereabouts.
   
• Enables mobile Instant Messaging (IM) so that colleagues can discreetly send each other brief text messages when a voice conversation isn’t appropriate, convenient or necessary.

The Marine Corps, ESPN and the NFL are just a few samples of the many organizations finding themselves squeezed between end user desire to share information, and the business need to contain the unfettered spread of that information.

In fact, Researcher Frost & Sullivan recently looked into the relationship between Social Networking and enterprises. And their report 2009 Corporate Use of Social Networking, which addressed applications such as Facebook and Twitter, highlights the need for Enterprise Social Networking.

• The vast majority (80%) of survey respondents report that they personally use Web 2.0 technologies to connect and share with friends and family while at work.
   
• More than half of all respondents (54%) reported that they use Web 2.0 technologies for professional purposes such as connecting with colleagues, generating leads and collaborating on projects.

The bottom line is any organization – sports, military, news outlets, businesses, etc. – can enjoy the collaborative benefits of Enterprise Social Networking, without sacrificing security. They simply need to ignore consumer tools such as Twitter and Facebook, and instead rely on the Enterprise 2.0 capabilities of Mobile UC to contain the flow of Status info.

I’m a Twitter Quitter, but a big fan of Enterprise Social Networking.

You know something is big news when so many analysts are blogging on it that No Jitter is forced to create a separate category around the topic, and Avaya’s $475 million “stalking horse” bid for Nortel is no exception.

One angle, however, analysts have yet to focus on in scrutinizing this business deal so closely is: Can the industry’s existing unified communications solutions transparently absorb a merged Norvaya (Nortel-Avaya) customer base?

While I can’t speak for other solutions, I can say definitively that DiVitas Mobile Unified Communications (Mobile UC) will be a unifying force among Avaya and Nortel customers.

Our solution currently runs seamlessly in both environments -- and with both TDM and IP PBXs, and will continue to do so when Avaya and Nortel equipment is running side-by-side under the Avaya umbrella.

DiVitas and Avaya already have a strong history, having worked closely together throughout the past few years to guarantee our Mobile UC solution works seamlessly with Avaya Communication Manager to affordably improve enterprise mobility. So much so that DiVitas has earned its place within Avaya’s DevConnect program at the prestigious platinum level by invitation. DiVitas is also the First Fixed Mobile Convergence (seamless roaming)/Mobile UC Partner to be Certified on Avaya's Aura Platform.

In fact, just recently our two companies announced that together, we have solved the time-consuming problem of managing multiple voicemail systems. DiVitas has tightly integrated our Mobile UC solution with Avaya Modular Messaging, which also runs on selected Nortel PBXs. Available today, DiVitas users can now retrieve, listen to and manage their Modular Messaging using visual voicemail on their DiVitas client handset. And because Modular Messaging is able to integrate with other vendor’s IP PBX solutions, this good news is very relevant to a broader audience beyond current Avaya customers.

From a DiVitas Mobile UC perspective, Nortel customers will never need to know that their PBX manufacturer is under new ownership and they will reap the rewards of mobile VoIP.

Deploying a Mobile Unified Communications (Mobile UC) solution is a very straightforward process. However, before you get started, you want to make sure your WLAN is up to spec in terms of being mobile VoIP-ready. Following are five survey questions to ask yourself first, and some answers to help fend off any potential problems.

1- Do you have an adequate number of WiFi Access Points (APs)?

Typically the answer to this question is “no.”

Organizations that have an existing WiFi infrastructure installed have most likely configured it for data.  Because voice is a real-time application, a WLAN that is configured for data will not be adequate for VoIP (Voice over IP).  Research suggests that businesses typically have as much as 20% fewer APs installed than what they really need for reliable VoIP coverage. This means there can be major coverage gaps in areas in between APs, which will cause WiFi calls to drop (similar to how cell calls drop when you roam in to gaps between tower coverage).

Be sure to create overlapping AP coverage in order to avoid WiFi signal gaps – and dropped calls.
 
2- Have you overlooked any high voice-traffic areas in placing your APs?

Businesses typically forget to include off-hand locations such as storage rooms, stairwells and elevator shafts in the AP plan. However, these are examples of quite popular areas where people tend to pass through during their busy day while on their phones. These places also offer weak or no cellular and may therefore benefit from WiFi for extended coverage in order to take advantage of seamless roaming and the benefits of reduced cellular costs (and hence reduced telecom costs).

Your voice over WiFi (VoWiFi) scheme needs to prepare for the idiosyncrasies of mobile VoIP – like the fact that mobile calls rarely happen at a predictable moment or location (like inside a storage room.) It is a common oversight because people typically think data first, and then plan around that need. These are key considerations when seeking to maximize enterprise mobility.

The lesson learned is: Watch traffic patterns among your own company’s mobile phone users when assessing your AP coverage. If your top sales people tend to use their phones in the stairwell, for example, or in front of the office building, you will want to put up some APs in those locations to make sure their calls don’t drop before closing a deal! Also, you want to give emlployees as much opportunity as possible to take advantage of free WiFi calls.

3- Is your WLAN future-proofed?

Choose a vendor that doesn’t require you to eventually replace your existing infrastructure. Some of the older WLANs required that businesses do a rip-and-replace in the event of a mobile VoIP-driven upgrade. Choosing a switched-based WLAN means you can extend your network very easily – a good thing because you want to be able to leverage your existing infrastructure.

4- Is your campus exactly like every other?

The answer is “absolutely not” because no two implementations are alike. Therefore, plan for the unexpected.

One installation I did in Hawaii, for example, dealt with an Army hospital that was built in the 40’s, and which therefore had walls so thick they had to put an access point in every room. (There was no hope for cellular penetration so WiFi was a wonderful mobile-communications alternative.)

Lesson learned: The older your building is, the harder it is to bring RF into it.

5- Make sure you are not trying to implement on the cheap.  

The lowest cost AP from even a highly reputable vendor may not be suitable for VOIP. Read case studies and do other research to identify a proven solution first.

Voice over WiFi Lessons Learned

One of my favorite WiFi-coverage mystery stories of all times, and one which can easily provide a learning lesson for anybody preparing their WLAN for the VoIP onslaught, is this one …

There was one deployment –a popular chain of lingerie stores – that called us for support one day (I was working for a well-known WiFi-phone manufacturer at the time.) We got the “911” WiFi-emergency alert when calls suddenly started dropping like crazy at one of the lingerie store locations, after having worked perfectly for months. Guess what we found? They had put up a dressing room with mirrors in the middle of the store. This caused shadows of RF that weren’t originally there, and Voila, a rash of dropped calls.

The solution: Adding more APs completed their WiFi coverage. In general, the more complete your coverage, the better your mobile VoIP experience will be.

Service Provider Clearfly Communications is now offering DiVitas Mobile Unified Communications (Mobile UC) as a managed mobile VoIP service to SMBs.

With DiVitas, Clearfly’s users are able to use WiFi to reduce cellular costs (free WiFi calls) and improve mobile voice quality. In enabling this mobile workforce, these users are also leveraging their PBX investments because DiVitas transforms a smartphone into a mobile deskphone – a DiVitas phone carries the corporate phone number (and caller ID) and mobilizes deskphone features (extension dialing, call transfer, hold, etc.).

Read more about how Clearfly and DiVitas are making enterprise mobility affordable and pervasive here.