Feature Story

March 5, 2007

Mobility is no longer a niche technology for sales and field service teams in businesses; it is becoming an indispensable tool for all employees. According to IDC, 28 percent of enterprise employees use their mobile phone as their primary business phone. But until recently mobile phones were used largely as consumer devices and were not well integrated into the unified communications systems at many enterprises.

Cisco's recent acquisition of mobile software company Orative has added a powerful new dimension to the Cisco Unified Communications system. In this interview, Cisco's Senior Director of Mobile Unified Communications Paul Fulton sat down to talk about Cisco's strategy, products and vision for mobile unified communications.

Before we discuss the impact of mobility on enterprise communications, let's start by defining Unified Communications.

Paul Fulton: Cisco's vision is to deliver a ubiquitous unified communications experience through wired, wireless and mobile devices. It's about enabling business users to communicate faster and more effectively by connecting people with people, not just devices to devices. I like to define the term unified communications using three tenets. It's about efficiency, which means using your resources in the best way to help you execute your business with speed. It's also about collaboration, the importance of having people communicate together in real-time in order to get things done quickly and effectively. And it's about openness, basing products on open standards and working closely with our partners so customers can integrate not just Cisco technology but also offerings from others across the industry.

Mobility seems to be gaining traction in enterprises, but isn't it still largely used for sales or service? Why is it so important that it be tied in with Unified Communications?

Paul Fulton: It can be deceptive how much mobility is used within enterprises. When most companies are asked who uses mobile solutions, they answer that the sales force is mobile or the field service team is mobile. These statements are true, but I would also point out that it is difficult to have an efficient company if you don't also consider the times you need to collaborate with employees who have just stepped away from their desk. When employees are driving, walking to a meeting or going out to lunch, they too become mobile employees. So, in fact, everybody in the organization is mobile to a certain extent.

Another way to look at it is from the devices and the technology that we use today. Most consumers carry mobile phones for personal use wherever they go. Then they enter the workplace and turn into employees. Now, do they throw away that mobile phone? Of course not, they take that phone with them into work and use it to communicate throughout the business day.

Just to throw out some statistics, British Telecom and Ovum conducted a few studies and found that 22 percent to 44 percent of mobile phone calls made in the enterprise were actually made standing next to a desk phone. And an IDC study found that 28 percent of enterprise employees use their cell phone as their primary business phone. So, it's obvious we have mobile employees and many are using mobile phones--but they are not connected into the enterprise. The mobile phones are consumer oriented, they have games, ringtones, some even have TV. But from the enterprise standpoint, the functionality is limited to plain old telephony service, or POTS. Cisco provides the ability to combine the utility of the phone that travels with us all the time with the rich unified communications experience that Cisco provides at your desk such as your IP phone and desktop applications. This creates a true unified communications experience for all employees no matter what they are doing or where they are.

But clearly these types of mobile users are different from those that are power users and require all-day mobile communications?

Paul Fulton: Yes, and this is why we define two types of users: a "coach class," if you will, and a "first class." For coach class, we provide basic, but powerful mobility functionality for every phone on the market. For example, for the casual mobile user we offer 'Single Number Reach' as part of Cisco Unified Communications that is proving to be very valuable. It offers two benefits. The first is that very often we may be away from our desk or traveling and a customer or a colleague calls our desk phone. Typically that call would roll over to voice mail. Cisco's 'Single Number Reach' forwards that call to our mobile phone so we don't miss a call. Even more valuable is that this feature allows us to determine what's known as 'block or allow,' which allows us to indicate which calls we want to roll through and which we want to go to voice mail. This provides us with a way to exert control over who can reach us and how we want them to reach us.

Another valuable feature of our basic mobility functionality is desk phone to mobile phone call transfer. So for example, if we are at our desk and we need to leave during a call you can press a single button on the desk phone and the call is transferred from the desk phone to the mobile phone -- without any interruption of the call. It's seamless. What's also great is that this feature is now built into every order of Cisco Unified Communications Manager 6.0, which we announced this week, so this comes with all new installs from now on.

What about the other class of users you mentioned the first-class or heavy users of mobile telephony?

Paul Fulton: This probably goes to that 28% that IDC recognizes as the people who use their primary phone as their mobile phone. We've really looked at what the pain points are and what the efficiency issues are and this is where the Cisco Unified Mobile Communicator comes in. One of the pain points of mobile professionals is that they have voice mails on their corporate systems and they have voice mails on their mobile phone This is frustrating because they have to listen to both to hear all their messages. So this week we're announcing unified voice mail, the ability to take all of the voice mail and put it into the enterprise system where the mobile phone can access all of it.

We also provide, if you will, visual voice mail where all your voice mails show visually on your mobile phone. You can see if the caller is available, if you want to call them back immediately. Otherwise, you can select any of the voice mails at random and play them with a "DVD like" user interface. Call logs is another area where Orative technology is helping. Very often heavy users of phones will use call logs as a way to call people on received or missed calls. Unfortunately, calls logs on desk phones and mobile phones have been separate, at least until now. With unified call logs, if I have missed calls, placed calls or received calls on either my mobile or my desk phone, I can now see them and use them all on my mobile phone.

How is Cisco leveraging Orative technology to competitive advantage?

Paul Fulton: A powerful technology that Orative brought to Cisco is a way to put a lightweight client application on the mobile phone and provide it with IP-based network connectivity. Now, why a lightweight client? When we did focus studies and asked people how they want their phone to work, the overwhelming response was that they wanted functions to happen immediately. When you press a button, you want something to happen. The browsers are improving on mobile handsets, but the fact of the matter is that they don't provide an instantaneous or consistent user experience.

Especially for type A people like myself, we don't want to wait. When I press the phone directory, I want that phone number to pop up. When I see the presence icon, which we have now in our enterprise and personal directories, I want another person to actually be available to talk and having the client right there on the phone enables that instant experience. But even more important is the ability to leverage the power of Cisco's network in the enterprise. The ability to have the power of the network on the mobile phone is what is really powerful about the combination of Cisco and Orative technology. It uses the packet data channel on the cellular system to deliver unified communications information from the enterprise. Orative has combined this technology with Cisco and it is now in Cisco's new offerings.