Last week, Lopez Research met with Pejman Roshan of Agito Networks to discuss its latest release, which now natively supports RIM’s BlackBerry. UCStrategies.com’s Michael Finneran covered the announcement in his article, “Agito Announces BlackBerry Support on Dual-Mode FMC”. And while Agito supported numerous platforms, including Nokia and Window’s mobile phones, RIM is still the smartphone of choice for many organizations. The new BlackBerry support fills what was a noticeable gap in Agito’s smartphone coverage and sets it apart from its competition – at least for the moment. But my conversation with Mr. Roshan, extended beyond the RIM BlackBerry announcement, to a larger discussion on why products such as Agito’s exist and if they will survive. 

In short, FMC products like Agito’s exist to fill the gaps that vendors have left behind as they tried to glue PBXs, unified communications and mobility together. While I was not initially convinced, Mr. Roshan presented compelling examples of how complicated it is for a company to get mobile UC up and running without a solution like Agito’s. We discussed how many products a company would have to purchase or upgrade to deliver on a unified mobility solution.  For example, to support BlackBerry within a Cisco environment you’d need to upgrade or purchase 5 elements including the UCM 7.x, Mobility Advantage Server 7.x, Cisco Unity 7.x, CUPS 7.x and the Cisco ASA 55xx.

We also discussed the lack of certain features, or the presence of a feature in only certain aspects of a vendor’s solution. For example, Cisco’s UCM does not support mid call features on the BlackBerry. And Avaya supports OCS integration on the PBX but not it the one-x mobile client. Meanwhile, RIM’s MVS handles mobility but the only interconnect is trunk side via the media gateways.  This suggests that it is not possible for a user’s desk phone and their MVS-enabled BlackBerry to have a shared line appearance.  MVS also add costs by requiring an additional DID over and above the DID of the desk phone. These problems only become more challenging as we companies look to integrate assets for the myriad of vendors like OCS from Microsoft, PBXs from Avaya and UC and device from vendors such as Nokia and RIM.  

Pej also noted that his customers are using its products because it excels at the basics while offering new features like location-enabled presence (see my research brief  on Agito moving from FMC to unified mobile communications). But the basics are not what most of us in the industry would define as basics (such as reliable seamless handoffs). The basics were very simple things such as call setup. For example, Agito’s customers noted that call setup with Avaya’s One X Mobile can take greater than 40 seconds due to reverse dialing.  While it might not sound like much, try waiting 40 seconds for the phone to ring. It feels like an eternity. 

After discussing the myriad of challenges and multiplying them by the number of potential vendors, I began to see why these solutions are useful and why it would be some time before any single vendor could offer a complete solution. This means Agito has room to grow while carriers fail to build compelling plans for in-building and charge exorbitant international long distance rates. However, Agito also has features and issues it must address to be successful.  While planned for autumn, this release doesn’t support presence and IM for RIM. The company also lacks support for the iPhone, which is becoming more attractive to firms now that it has features like on-device encryption. There is also an onslaught of new phones like the Palm Pre that will require support. Echoing Michael Finneran’s opinion, there are still so many holes that need to be filled that it is easier for companies to say No to UC than it is to say Yes.  But at least we have one vendor is addressing the glaring lack of support for RIM’s devices.