Mobility in the core of UC

BANGALORE, INDIA: Ovum, an analyst and consulting company, believes that the UC benefit for mobile users will come from the greater communication flexibility and efficiency.

Claudio Castelli, senior analyst, based in Melbourne researches the benefits of mobile UC as well as challenges companies may face.

Users on the move will be able to complete time-sensitive tasks that involve several people, either inside or outside of an enterprise organisation. Contacts will be accessible at anytime, anywhere, by the most efficient communication way. In addition, the next step in UC will also link critical business applications, offering more capability to mobile users.

“However, there is a long way to go and several challenges, both from the enterprises themselves and to mobile users to get the real unified mobile office”, said Castelli.

“The future enterprise communications environment will be a complex mesh of services mapped on to different devices chosen according to the different user needs and degrees of mobility. Mobility generally pushes for a broader range of devices, increasing the challenge to keep maintenance and support simple. The migration from legacy telephony technology to an integrated UC environment including telephony, messaging, and business process applications will normally occur in several steps. Better support tools and a centralized management of all enterprise’s assets and devices will be a requirement.”

In addition, as users become more mobile, security assumes greater importance. “A remote and mobile workforce using mobile applications is at risk of losing confidential and critical company information”, Claudio added. In a unified communication environment, applications such as email, IM, customer relationship management, and field service automation can make data more vulnerable. With many applications and devices through different networks and environments the complexity of security is much higher.

As most of the benefits are difficult to measure, enterprises have to understand how UC will improve their process and affect business performance. “During this process it is important to recognise that companies have different cultures, business characteristics and levels of mobility. Some organisations are more social than others. To what extend the better communication and collaboration proposed by the UC will impact on them will depend on these differences”, said Claudio.