Feature Story

November 5, 2007

As networks and handheld devices evolve, so do our expectations of their capabilities. Companies are embracing a vision of the mobile workspace - the idea that employees, no matter where their work may take them during the course of any given day, communicating and collaborating fluidly over every kind of network and every kind of device.

To realize this vision, technology must be increasingly flexible. It must accommodate security and the smooth handoff between corporate and public networks. In conjunction with Cisco, companies like Hewlett-Packard, Intermec, Nokia, and Research in Motion are delivering new handset devices that enable more reliable, seamless communications with networks and applications. With these devices, users will be able to take advantage of cellular and broadband networks, capitalizing on the flexibility for leveraging voice and data communications.

To understand this growing trend of seamless mobile collaboration, News@Cisco spoke to Cisco Systems vice president of marketing Alan Cohen about how enterprise mobility is changing - and can change further - how companies communicate and collaborate.

How is mobility changing the way people work?

Alan Cohen: It's actually changing the paradigm of how and where people work. Rather than thinking about people working using a desktop computer or a telephone or even a PDA, think of them as having a workspace that supports unified communications of voice, data and video. That workspace will change depending on where they are. It may be their desktop during the day or the handheld on the way to the airport. It can depend on whether they're road warriors, corridor cruisers, or field sales workers. We're fostering something called seamless mobile collaboration, which makes that environment seamless across the course of the employee's day and seamless across any device that person might use. It's a much more human way to communicate.

This concept of the "mobile workspace delivers the experience of employees being at their desks when they're not. It's the way offices used to be. If I had a question for someone, I'd get up and walk to their office. A lot of the communications we have as humans are asynchronous, and it can be hours or days before you get an answer to your question. That makes communications almost overwhelming, because we're not doing it in real time. It's even worse if that communication has to go across the boundaries of an enterprise or countries.

How is the idea of the mobile workspace getting traction today?

Alan Cohen: There are actually several trends going on to create the traction for seamless mobile collaboration. There's the basic trend of global companies wanting to be faster at their decision making simply as a competitive advantage. Also, there is the avalanche of capabilities in smart phones, such as a Nokia E61i, a dual-mode phone that works with both cellular and wireless LAN networks; it's actually a small personal computer.

Another trend relates to the shift from Web 1.0 to Web 2.0. This is what I call Cohen's Unified Theory of Communications: Web 1.0 was all about find it, buy it, fix it, while Web 2.0 is find me, communicate with me, collaborate with me. Businesses want to do the same thing, and people who are comfortable with the Web 2.0 environment are going to want to do all that with a computer in the palm of their hand.

This shift in the workforce is driving an important trend, too. Don't forget, there is a worldwide race for the acquisition of talent. The new generation has different expectations of how they're going to work and communicate. How can you attract those people without an environment that supports that kind of collaboration?

How will mobile workspace solutions from Cisco change the way people share information?

Alan Cohen: That goes back to what I said before about emulating the old office experience by incorporating the idea of presence - the ability to see if employees are available and how they want to be contacted. It's the electronic version of seeing if the door to their office is open, only better, because if they're in a meeting, they can tell people to communicate only through IM, and only if it's urgent. Otherwise, leave a voicemail or e-mail, which they can check when they leave the meeting, even before they get back to their desktop.

In the future, the whole idea of collaboration will expand through searching and directory services. If I'm not available, you can quickly find someone else, such as a colleague of mine, who can answer your question. Through context, you have access to more information. No matter whether it's an internal or an external person doing the search, that's another clear advantage for both employee productivity and customer service.