Mobile UC - The “Un-Strategy”
Enterprise Connect (EC) has just wrapped up in Orlando, and while the main focus was on UC, collaboration, and video, mobility was extended its customary lip service. For those who relish irony, in his keynote address Kirk Koenigsbauer, Corporate VP, Office Business Productivity Group at Microsoft said that mobility was at the top of their list of priorities. In the meantime, Microsoft once again declined our invitation to participate in any of the mobility sessions.
However, it’s not fair to pick on Microsoft in this regard, as the other UC suppliers seem to be as lost in their repeated attempts to make any headway with mobility solutions to enhance their desktop offerings. In my EC sessions I asked if anyone was using a mobile UC client like Cisco’s Unified Mobile Communicator (now to be called Cisco Jabber), Avaya oneX, or Siemens OpenScape Mobility. From the several hundred people I asked, I found 5 users. Three of them worked for Cisco, so in effect we got 2. In each case the mobile products were used by less than 5% of their user population and almost all of those were in IT.
When “Free” is the Worst Deal in Town
As one of the few analysts with a presence in both UC and mobility, I regularly get requests from vendors to do feature comparisons between their mobile product and those of their competitors. This is an exercise that leaves me scratching my head. What I’m thinking is, “Yours doesn’t sell, and theirs doesn’t sell either- what actionable intelligence do you expect to gain from this exercise?” It turns out that the problem is much larger than features.
From a marketing standpoint, this is a conundrum in that cost does not seem to be an issue either. In his Enterprise Connect session “Comparing UC Options: Who’s Offering What” our own Marty Parker asked 11 vendors to price out their various UC features including mobility (I did a similar exercise in my “Integrating Mobility and UC RFP” session, but my costs included cellular usage so Marty’s are easier to assess). In four cases, mobility was free, and for those who charge, the prices ranged from $4 to $75.09 per user per year.
Interestingly, RIM came in third from the top at $41.15 per user per year. RIM just sells mobility so they can’t “bundle” the cost with anything else. What is interesting is that RIM’s Mobile Voice Solution (MVS) is the mobility solution I encounter most frequently. Avaya, Cisco, IBM, and Siemens all offered mobility for free. Why would someone opt for a more costly solution (and one that limits you to a single brand of smartphones), when they could get the other alternatives for free?
The primary difference is that RIM is tied into the mobility buyers directly (rather than those responsible for the wired network), and they address mobility as a core business objective rather than an “add-on.” The strategy from the traditional UC supplier is essentially to dump the capability on the floor and see if anyone picks it up. People value mobility, and have shown time and again that they don’t mind paying for it - you don’t see the mobile operators giving anything away, do you?
Frankly, when the price is zero, no one has an incentive to sell the mobile UC trick. The VAR is looking to sell the PBX, and once that’s done, there’s no significant revenue stream to be had from getting users to adopt the mobile bit. The IT department has better things to do, so all they’ll do is mention it’s available. From that point on, it’s up to the user to integrate the mobile UC tools into their work life.
The result is that users are getting the mobility solutions they prize from the place you’d expect, the mobile industry! That means handset manufacturers like RIM and software developers that support them. You can add the mobile operators, third-part security, mobile device management, and wireless expense management vendors to that list as well.
So What Does the Mobile UC User Want?
Having watched the mobility space for so long, I have a pretty good feel for what sells in the mobile space, though some areas clearly call for more research. When I queried the UC vendors regarding their research into mobile user needs/requirements, I was amazed to find how little they had actually done. One of the biggest question marks is Web-based mobile UC.
Faced with the failure of their original mobile client solutions (and the difficulties involved in developing on platforms like iPhone), many of the UC vendors have now opted for Web-based mobility solutions. The beauty of the Web-based approach is that you eliminate the requirement to maintain client software for all of the various operating systems; all you need is a mobile browser.
That move from apps to browsers is one of the major trends we are watching in mobility, but while it may be a panacea for many applications, voice could be the major exception. Mobile users need voice and they have a well-established expectation about how to make and receive calls on a mobile device. The browser approach calls for a major change to that calling process. After locating a contact’s number on the Web-based app, the user clicks “call”, and the app dials the caller’s mobile number, the user manually answers, and the app then places the call to the called party. If you’re introducing this “call-yourself-to-call-somebody-else” process, I think it would be rather important to do some research on user acceptance. If anyone is doing that research, I can’t find them.
Some technical innovations are essentially no-brainers, like the “flicking” function found on most touch screen smartphones and tablets. When you’re taking an established user process and turning it on its ear, that’s something you might want to take a closer look at. Once again, the vendors are depending on the “dump it on the floor and see who picks it up” strategy.
The Risk
Mobility is the most exciting thing that is going on in networking today, but for the moment the UC community is out of the loop. The entire communications industry is in upheaval with out-of-the-blue competitors like Microsoft, IBM, and even Google, Oracle, Facebook, and Skype encroaching on the space. Innovation is coming in waves; Facebook just bought mobile messaging company Beluga to enhance their mobile capabilities. Cisco burst onto the PBX scene when VoIP became feasible, and Microsoft rocked the world again incorporating telephony features into Lync; can anyone really think that’s the last chapter?
The most significant rumor is that turned up last week was the possibility that RIM might open up their BlackBerry Messenger (BBM) service to other platforms, notably iPhone and Android. While RIM has not confirmed this move, if it were to come about it would signal a major change in direction for RIM. RIM is the only large-scale manufacturer focused on enterprise mobility, but their goal up until now has been to sell BlackBerry smartphones. Product additions like their MVS and interfaces to Lync and IBM’s Sametime have all been geared toward enhancing the BlackBerry experience- in other words, sell more BlackBerry smartphones.
Expanding their focus beyond their own devices could signal RIM’s intention to take the next step and become a true mobile solutions provider. With a mobility solution for enterprise customers that addressed the full range of mobile devices (even if it worked somewhat better on BlackBerry devices), RIM could begin building a dominant mobility-driven UC capability that lessens the customer’s allegiance to any particular desktop UC solution. Rather than looking at mobility as an add-on to the desktop, maybe UC becomes an add-on to the mobility solution.
Mobility is the Achilles Heel of UC. The vendors all talk about it, but none has come up with anything close to a compelling solution. With the number of disruptive competitors that have come onto the scene, you would think by now that they would be attuned to the potential of those one-off competitors. Users’ views about what to expect from their communications are increasingly being shaped by their mobile experience. The mobile element could be the tail that wags the UC dog.