Fixed mobile convergence supplier Tango Networks recently announced that they can now interoperate with Microsoft’s Office Communication Server 2007 in deployments with third-party PBX co-existence and PBX integration. This allows Tango’s Abrazo product to update the OCS 2007 server thereby providing mobile presence and location information to contacts on the wired network.

Presence information will be even more important to mobile than to wired users. While Avaya, Cisco, Siemens, Agito, DiVitas, and others have introduced mobile UC products, presence support seems to be the primary differentiating characteristic. I’ve been working on a major study of the FMC/mobile UC space, and while my product survey is not yet complete, I have found far more mobile UC products that didn’t support presence than did. As many of my colleagues here at UC Strategies have pointed out, presence is the cornerstone of UC, so it will be a defining feature.

Tango’s ability to provide mobile presence in an OCS environment is a notable accomplishment, however, it comes with two major qualifiers. First, Rob Arnold of Current Analysis notes that Abrazo is only certified with OCS as a standalone PBX. He goes on to point out that Abrazo is not certified in OCS configurations that include existing PBXs, which today represents the majority. As a result there will be few users who can actually benefit from this.

More limiting is Tango Networks’ position in the FMC market. Tango utilizes a unique FMC architecture that requires a server in the enterprise and a second component in the cellular carrier’s network. That means the solution falls in the carrier FMC (cFMC) space, or solutions that require the full cooperation of a cellular carrier. As I’ve noted in a number of posts and presentations, the cellular carriers have not been enthusiastic about deploying enterprise FMC services. The only reported implementation of Tango’s solution in the US is a CDMA carrier called Strata8. If you haven’t heard of them it probably has to do with the fact that their coverage is pretty thin (their primary roaming partner is Sprint Nextel).

While the support for mobile presence on a non-existent IP PBX in conjunction with an equally scarce cellular service is not going to have a major impact on the gross national product, the announcement does serve to illustrate two important points. There is interest in presence-enabled mobile UC, and once again it’s the little guys who are bringing these capabilities to the market