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What does Mobility mean to you?

Definition from Wikipedia:”Mobile computing, a generic term describing one’s ability to use technology untethered, but often used to refer to access to information or applications from occasionally-connected, portable, networked computing devices.”Mobility can also be described as providing a consistent user experience to a diverse workgroup that has different device approaches to do their different jobs and tasks. And what really becomes important is understanding what people do, how they do it, where they do it across the entire day, what tools they use to do their job.Each industry and company will have their own needs and challenges that will require solutions based on unified communications. Imagine this scenario, a doctor walks into a patients room, based on her location and presence the system will push the patient’s medical records to her mobile device and request an update of the records to confirm the patient visit. Even today we no longer consider a mobile worker to be a road warrior or someone away from their desk the majority of the time, a mobile worker is anyone that leaves their desk whether it’s for a meeting or for lunch, having their enterprise applications at their fingertips and ultimately being more response to customer needs. As smartphones become more powerful we can run more sophisticated applications that will allow us to blur the line between our office workspace and our mobile workspace. Does this story sound familiar? I’m on the highway and need to join a meeting, I wrote the meeting dial-in and authentication credentials on a piece of paper and need to enter it manually to my cell phone to join the bridge.This happens because the cell phone today is a island, completely separate from the enterprise voice infrastructure. We want to build a bridge between the enterprise voice infrastructure and the cell phone. So when you receive a IM at work, it can appear on your cell phone; when you receive a voicemail at work, you will get notification on your cell phone. Your desk phone call logs will appear on your cell phone. When your desk phone rings, so will your cell phone. And of course, you will get conference call notices on your cell phone and you can click one button to join the conference. In addition to increasing productivity and responsiveness there’s also hard cost savings to take into account. We can save on cell phone minutes by only giving out a single number using Cisco Mobile Connect (SNR), this will discourage users to call back on their cell phone, rather they will use the deskphone number and all calls will be anchored in the enterprise. Features such as Dial via Office will allow employees to make international calls through the enterprise rather than eating up cell minutes. Dual Mode functionality will allow employees to send and receive calls via the enterprise voice infrastructure while on campus and seamlessly moving the call to the cellular network when leaving the campus. Mobility supports work/life balance but can also enable a company to reduce their office space requirements. What applications/processes are critical to your organization, what functions would you like your employee to have while away from their desk? by Alex Revzin, network consulting engineer, Cisco.

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