Mobile UC

by Brian Taler, Nortel Enterprise Business Solutions, and Yuan Yuan, Nortel Enterprise Product Marketing

Cellular phones are fixtures in today’s business world. Their obvious objective is to connect workers while on the go. What is less obvious is whether these mobile devices are enabling the most efficient and cost-effective communication. If they are not part of a unified communications solution, the answer is probably no.

According to Joel Hackney, president of Nortel’s Enterprise Solutions, in today’s world many business people use about six different communication devices and almost as many software applications on those devices, but that's not helping them to better connect. A mobile UC solution brings the same features employees experience in the office to their mobile communications environment including dialing by extension, conferencing and call transferring.

Nortel recently enhanced its mobile UC offering. The new solution enables employees to have one number and one voicemail across all of their devices, a presence indicator integrated with OCS clients that lets colleagues know when they are available or on the phone even while mobile, and the ability to transfer between a mobile and fixed device with the click of a button without interrupting the call.

Mobile UC enables workers to increase the speed with which they are able to connect and collaborate with colleagues, make faster decisions and improve reaction time to customers. The added benefit for enterprises is the ability to reduce the cost of their mobile communications budgets.

Traveling employees can rack up large mobile expenses to the point where some enterprise are seeing 50 percent of their total mobile communications costs being generated by less than 10 percent of their employee base. Mobile UC linked to the corporate network creates an opportunity to lower these costs by avoiding many cellular long-distance and roaming charges that make up the majority of these expenses.