Another Take on Mobile UC
One of the things I find really fascinating about Unified Communications is how vendors and end users will more often than not have different ways of defining UC. If I think of this as a Venn diagram, the space occupied by the overlapping circles of vendors and customers will be pretty small, and that’s why the industry needs resources like UCStrategies to make sense of it all! This is not necessarily a bad thing, but ultimately, since the end user is doing the buying, their definition of UC matters the most. Vendors who figure out how to align their value proposition with what the market is willing to pay for will do well, and the others will just add to the confusion we’re all trying to sort out.
At a high level, I think we all have a pretty good idea of the UC product promise, but in many cases the specifics from the vendors create a grander and/or more complex vision than most businesses are able to embrace. All businesses struggle with getting value from the myriad of communications options available to them, and in the end, they’ll rely on those which are easiest to use and get the job done. Some businesses will be voice-centric, some will be text-centric and others will be video centric. They’re all striving for the same result, but clearly there is no one-size-fits-all UC solution.
I could take this preamble in many directions, but will focus here on a specific market opportunity that I think will find a healthy niche – mobile UC. Mobility adds another layer of complexity to the UC spectrum, and many vendors today incorporate some degree of mobility to their UC offering. In my view, there is no single path to mobile UC, and for that reason there is room for new twists that will create viable subcategories for businesses to adopt.
This brings me to Openmind Networks, an Irish company I briefed with recently. Just because I was in Boston for St. Patrick’s Day last week, don’t assume I’m being overly charitable to this company! Things just worked out that way, and I’m trying to focus more here on the emerging mobile UC opportunity than what Openmind has on offer.
Most companies will associate FMC and IP PBX integration with mobile UC, which is to be expected since most of the vendors have a telecom pedigree. For businesses that think of UC as being voice-centric this is perfectly reasonable approach. However, some businesses are now relying more on text – email, chat, messaging, etc. Not only that, but their everyday workflows are increasingly becoming mobile. With mobile broadband becoming the norm, smartphones have built a strong base here, and now tablets are adding another layer to this foundation.
This trend will not only continue, but will accelerate as developer apps for business start to gain the traction we’re seeing in the consumer space. For many businesses, mobile devices are becoming a core hub for communications, and voice is not the center of attention. As mobile devices continue adding utility for end users, there will be less need to integrate these communications with the desktop – for both phones and PCs.
We may be a ways off from this becoming the norm, but this presents a viable alternative for businesses with these types of preferences. Not only does this threaten the telecom-based UC vendors (which explains why they are not heading down this path), but the service providers as well. This vision of mobile UC is Web-based and bypasses telecom networks altogether. As such, there could be a lot at stake here, but of course there is opportunity for operators who want to stay on the right side of the curve with this particular set of business customers.
So what does this flavor of mobile UC look like? For starters, it’s built around text and messaging. In the case of Openmind, these are their roots, and the idea is to build their offering – Portico – around these modes. Perhaps more importantly, this is a cloud-based solution, so it’s network agnostic and is independent of telco-based networks. In essence, the Internet becomes the network for this service, and they provide value by integrating these modes across all types of devices, namely smartphones and tablets.
This is an emerging space, and Openmind has recognized an opportunity here. For end users heavily dependent on these modes and devices, no services have existed until now that synchronize across these variations. This also extends to voice calls and social media, and provides a more versatile environment for Web-based telephony than standalone services like Skype or Google Voice. As such, messages will be updated across all devices, along with other everyday tasks such as updating address books. By the way, desktop PCs are part of the solution as well, so Portico can address pretty much all voice or text needs aside from the IP PBX. Finally, as new apps come on stream, it becomes very easy to keep enhancing the feature set across all devices and modes.
In short, this is a Web-based model that is building on the momentum created by smartphones and tablets along with the carrier shift towards LTE and mobile VoIP. With these trends in mind, it’s not surprising that Openmind has come to market supporting the Android and iOS platforms, both of which play very well for supporting the needs outlined above. Conversely, support for BlackBerry and Windows OS 7 will come later; these are major platforms for sure, but not really the leaders for where Openmind is going.
I certainly don’t see Openmind displacing established UC deployments or telecom vendors – or service providers for that matter. However, I do see an offering like Portico being a great add-on, even if just for a portion of a company’s workforce. Tablets are still very new, but with these capabilities, I can easily see businesses making a case to start using them, and looking at this as a valid form of mobile UC. This may not be what you had in mind when thinking about mobile UC, but it makes sense to me, and if Openmind is on the right track, it will to others as well.