Mitel Goes Mobile with Dynamic Extension

Mitel has kept a secret lately – Series-X. Teasers at VoiceCon said it was coming April 16. As it turns out, Series-X represented a new product and approach to mobility called Dynamic Extension and a new philosophy regarding proprietary hardware. I am really impressed with this new philosophy. During a tough economic period, Mitel is the only major switch vendor trying to enhance rather than replace legacy investments. Not only is Mitel enriching their core technology, but extending it from end point to server.

The predecessor to Dynamic Extension was a Mitel product called Mobile Extension (ME). ME enabled mobile phones to be twinned with desk phones. It was relatively simple to use and tore down many of the limitations surrounding mobility.  Consider this scenario, you are out of town and get this call on your cell phone:  “Sorry to bother you but I only had your number handy – can you connect me to Shipping at your office?” The typical response, or excuse, would be something like: “Oh, I am so sorry, you caught me out of town [guilt] so I can’t transfer you, instead can you call the main number 555-1212?” This response is perfectly acceptable to most, but not to me. We need to stop making excuses and compromises for our mobility.  ME solved that by allowing calls to be transferred (with an esoteric star code **6) and handle the call without the remote compromise. If you are treating callers differently due to your mobility, you need a better mobility solution.

Dynamic Extension takes ME to the next level – it allows up to eight phones to be put into a single “Personal Ring Group” (PRG). The solution addresses "hotdesking" (hoteling), telecommuting, presence, and mobility in a single product. The phones can be any combination of IP/Mitel, SIP, analog, digital, or wireless; any phone - any place. The software is now built into the core Mitel 3300 software, rather than requiring a separate server. And, the esoteric dial codes are replaced with single digit commands (transfer is 2).

Mobility is an important aspect of our work life – and I don’t mean just tele-commuters or road warriors, but hallway warriors as well. Every year, it seems the likelihood of being able to reach someone at their desk decreases. A few years ago, it was normal practice to only call someone’s cell phone when the other numbers didn’t’ work – now more and more – we skip the landline option completely. But cell phone usage is not cheap; organizations are spending more every year on minutes. Dynamic Extension allows for one touch hand-off between phones in the PRG. Take a call on the cell at the coffee machine and finish it at your desk with a landline; transparently.

The “Ring All” option isn’t a new concept in phone systems. Derivatives of this feature are available from all the usual suspects.  The vast majority of them use various forms of call forwarding, and the call gets released from the PBX after the call is connected. Dynamic Extension keeps the connection to the PBX alive – adding a tremendous amount of value and potential. For example with Dynamic Extension, the Mitel can report to an OCS server the user status “in a call” even though the user is on their cell phone or home analog phone.

Mitel positions Dynamic Extensions as hardware independent. No Mitel phone is required in the picture at all, and putting a Mitel 3300 in front of a legacy system can even enable TDM phones to report presence, and twin with SIP phones. Mitel is also unbundling the 3300 call control from their hardware and will soon be releasing it as software called Mitel Communications Director to be supported on Sun, HP, and IBM servers. With economics as they are; pushing PBX functionality without phones or servers has merit.

The PRG concept is great for receiving calls, but introduces some challenges for initiating calls. The problem is PRGs lose their value when people call phones directly, such as direct dialing a cell phone and bypassing the group and PBX.  So if you are working remotely, you have to first dial the PBX, and then dial the number you desire to call. Skipping this process and direct dialing will give out direct numbers via caller id. These extra steps are cumbersome, particularly from a cell phone that holds the directory. This process could be dramatically improved with speech recognition, personal speed dials, or a click to dial applet on the desktop or cell phone – none of which are currently supported by Mitel.

Recently, Google introduced a similar personal ring group service. It isn’t a direct alternative because it requires a new number, doesn’t offer basic PBX functionality such as transfer, and isn’t positioned for the enterprise. It does, however, provide a reasonable yardstick for comparing ring group features. The Google service offers call screening, call recording, conference calling, voice mail, voice mail transcription, a single call log for all devices, SMS support, and applets for cell phones and desktops. Mitel does not offer any of these features through Dynamic Extension.

Mitel does offer applications for many of these features, but how/if/when they get integrated into Dynamic Extension is unknown. For example, Mobile Extension, which evidently has not come to end of life, has clients for a limited number of cell phone models. I think a web based client for Dynamic Extension will be very useful – to initiate calls, and for potential integration to other features such as presence. I assume these features are coming in future releases.

I applaud Mitel for repackaging and creating such a strong application. But they certainly are not alone. Google is just one competitor, but Avaya has one-X family of products and both Nortel and Cisco offer multiple solutions for mobility – some of these offer much tighter application integration. It is very nice to see the industry focusing more on mobility. Together, we can end the voice mail greeting, “I am away from desk, so please leave a message”.