I know that one of my UC Strategies colleagues, Don Van Doren, attended the 2011 HIMSS Conference in Atlanta and should be able to report more details in how UC is making progress with health care applications. However, I was very impressed to see Avaya jumping in with both feet to exploit mobile devices for both hospital staff as well as mobile patient contacts to fully exploit UC for operational efficiency and effectiveness. (Never mind reduced telephony costs because of IP Telephony and SIP trunking!)

I have always seen mobility as the real driver for end user interest and benefits from UC and Avaya has finally connected some of the dots between the hospital environment, health care information systems, and patients who are not in a hospital environment but are key participants in operational performance issues. Given that the health care topic is at the top of this country’s financial concerns, anything that will help improve the performance of health care activities will get attention from everybody!

So, the headlines that got my attention are some of Avaya’s new solutions announced at HIMSS this past week. What’s important is that this is not just a start-up company with a bright idea, but an experienced technology provider with an established market share that is finally delivering something significantly better to the marketplace. (So, expect others to follow suit accordingly!)

• Mobile Device Checkout - Basically, this new function supports “dual personna” mobility on premise by letting hospital staff use their own, personalized mobile devices to be be automatically accessible through the hospital’s phone system and WLAN,  by generating a temporary unique phone number. It allows for role-based-contacts, rather than having to know specific individual names and numbers, and it ties into a presence-based system for locating personnel. Yeah!
• Nurse Call Response - This solution replaces the need for a patient to contact a nurse’s station in order to talk to the nurse responsible for their care, but will initiate the contact directly with the appropriate nurse either available or assigned such responsibility. This reduces the wasted time delay and frustrations for a patient who needs immediate attention. (The announcement did not mention any options for such call contacts to exploit the benefits of UC with visual, contextual information on a smart-phone device.)
• Patient Admit Coordinator - This “workflow” solution targets patients coming to an Emergency Room for treatment to be admitted to a hospital bed. Currently, such procedures are paper-based, slow, inefficient, and costly. (I know from recent personal experience!)
• Patient Appointment Reminder - This is not really anything new, but is a basic application that can capitalize on the multi-modality of UC for personalized outbound notifications. It is particularly useful for health care and especially for senior citizens whose memory starts to suffer with age. It is also useful for other types of reminders, such as time to take a particular medication, or if an automated patient monitoring application detects a new problem, the need to see a particular doctor or take a particular medication suddenly becomes critical.

The above applications are tied to mobility of the individual end user, either as a contact initiator or a contact recipient, which in turn is tied to UC for flexible communications. I am sure there are other apps/solution examples in the health care environment, and some of these will also apply to other business activities, e.g., appointment reminders, CEBP applications, etc. So, I am glad to see some of the fundamental visions of UC that I and my colleagues have been pushing for several years starting to be realized in the real world.

Tags: Contact Center, Mobile UC, Mobility, Unified Communications Information by Art Rosenberg
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At this week’s Mobile World Congress in Barcelona, Verizon CTO Tony Melone re-iterated the carrier’s planned commercial introduction of Voice over IP over LTE (VoLTE) before the end of 2012. He also stated that 4 LTE-compatible smartphones will be available no later than this June.  These are dual-mode devices, using traditional 2G cellular services for voice.

Why is VoLTE such a big deal? Here are just a few reasons:

For customers:

• Since the technology is all IP-based , this will make it much easier to for customers to use a wide variety of mobile and mobilized UC applications that also include voice, including those embedded in communications-enabled business processes (CEPB) like click to call embedded in a CRM application.
• VoLTE calls can interface to carrier-certified SIP stacks and applications, just as SIP Trunk services do today. This will make it less cumbersome for both SIP-based mobile and fixed handsets to use the same application –either network-based (like hosted IP audioconferencing) or premises-based. I expect the arrival of VoLTE will facilitate the introduction of many more mobile and mobilized UCaaS applications than are currently available. With VoLTE, FMC may finally come into its own.
• The same methods to monitor and maintain session and application performance can be used across all applications. Of course, these methods themselves continue to, ahem, “mature”. They haven’t “arrived” yet, not by a long shot.

For suppliers:

• On the mobile carrier side, use of the same technology to support all mobile applications is a necessary precursor to ultimately retiring 2G (cellular voice) service. We have seen this before—with the complete retirement of analog cellular technology just a few years ago. This process will take some time, but when it does, it will allow the carrier to re-deploy all of its licensed spectrum in a much more efficient manner, supporting several more magnitudes of simultaneous sessions than it can today.
• It will provide the basis for mobile device vendors, applications developers and carriers to work together to create the necessary methods to offer better end-end security, and as alluded to above, meaningful end-end SLAs. Finally, it will become harder and harder for all mobile suppliers to dodge these legitimate enterprise requirements.
• It will set the stage to unleash great innovation—on applications, devices, and ancillary services. This includes collaboration and UC. And if mobile carriers do their work very well, it can also create a necessary cornerstone of potentially huge wave(s) of (multi-media) cloud-based services. When VoLTE becomes real, we’ll have the opportunity, finally, to see how much an IMS architecture that supports both fixed and mobile SIP stacks can deliver on all of its promises. Many of us who are friends of UC Strategies can hardly wait.

Tags: Mobile UC, Mobility by Lisa Pierce
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The saying “All roads lead to Rome”, could for this week be changed to “All communication roads lead to Barcelona.” The big names in mobility are there; Ericsson, Nokia, Microsoft, RIM, Motorola, Broadcom, Alcatel-Lucent, ZTE Corporation and Huawei and more, but also IT heavy weights such as Google’s Eric Schmidt, Paul Otellini from Intel and Cisco’s John Chanmbers. The line between IT and mobility feels like they are officially gone. More and more users choose mobile devices to access the Internet, so it is not surprising that so many choose to visit this gigantic event.

Most interesting was probably this week’s announcement that Nokia partners up with Microsoft to use Windows Phone for their smartphones. This new strategy leaves a lot of questions, and the Nokia stock declined when the news became official. Nokia also negotiated with Google, but in the end they choose to work with Microsoft. This direction is not surprising since the world’s largest mobile phone supplier would have effectively created a duopoly with Apple iOS, if they had chosen Android over Microsoft. Microsoft has other challenges as well. Their efforts to claim the mobile device has not been as successful as many anticipated. The partnership with Nokia is really their chance. I am sure the two companies will work day and night to produce new phones. When Stephen Elop (former executive at Microsoft) president and chief executive officer of Nokia Corporation held a press conference after the Microsoft announcement he was confident, but made clear that they have a long way to go before this cooperation shows any results.

When Steve Balmer of Microsoft held his key-note he said that they will release two major updates to Windows Phone and make it possible to run Internet Explorer 9 on their phones. By using a hardware accelerant it will be possible to play h.264 encoded clips in the browser and get the same performance as running an application natively on the phone.

Ericsson announced a concept that will allow mobile operators to offer a cloud-pc together with Akamai. Ericsson explained that their vision is that our world is completely connected via wireless networks where everything is tied together using machine-to-machine technology. Hans Vestberg said that Ericsson will be the leading provider to the networked society. Ericsson is strong in mobility and broadband solutions, now they are investing in the third area, the cloud. Their service consists of a thin computer with a special version of Linux. Their servers use virtualization, network and security technology and was demonstrated running Microsoft Excel from a server in India via High Speed Packet Access (HSPA), high-speed 3G data services provided by cellular carriers worldwide that use the GSM technology.

But MWC is also about gadgets.

• Android is one of the big players where Google in only a few years have created a dominant position. MWC presented far more Android devices than any other.
• Motorola is back in the game again with new devises.
• Chinese company ZTE presented a number of 4G pad devices and thus trying to enter into the premium segment.
• Sony-Ericsson presented new devices before the show started. But for enterprise customers the business mobile Xperia Pro with built in support for device management, Microsoft Office document editing, and native Microsoft Exchange connector, a well-spaced QWERTY keyboard that slides out and Android 2.3 Gingerbread.
• Samsung presented a new Galaxy S II with larger screen, thinner casing, full HD, 8M pixel camera and voice control. They also demonstrated a new Galaxy Tab 10.1 with a 10.1 inch screen. But their strategic alliance with Adobe, Cisco and Sybase is even more interesting for enterprise customers and will be interesting to see what they will achieve together.
• HTC presented five new devises, among them HTC Scribe which allows the user to write with a pen directly on the screen.
• LG presented mobile phones and Pads that could show 3D without special glasses. This is a feature from their TV side.

So, what was missing? Or should I say who was missing? Apple.
As usual they are not participating in the Barcelona event. But the spirit of Apple does hoover the show. The rumors of new versions for Ipad and Iphone, what they will include keep flourishing.

But hey, who doesn’t love a mystery?

Tags: Mobile UC, Mobility by Jason Andersson
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Sometimes marketing ideas go way to fast from idea to implementation.

Two partnering communication-suppliers in Sweden have together branded what a “Smart company” is, in terms of communication services:

A company is defined as smart that gives service to its customers when it suits them, has a mobile way of working and can share relevant internal systems with clients and partners. (TelekomIdag)

Then they have measured Swedish companies and organizations how well they are at “being smart”.

Sounds like a good idea, right. Well it depends on the reasons for the index. Both these companies want to position themselves as the key successful factors for those who want to be a smart company, and who doesn’t. But really what they are trying to do is what they always do (and should do) sell, sell, sell. They are not doing this to help or even to get any type of truth out; on the contrary, they will get organizations that are unsure of what they need to do, to invest in things their customers are not looking for.

Ok, let’s take their smart company definition one point at the time to find out what, if anything really is smart and what is absolutely necessary when doing business. In essence we want to see what in the definition will give a company or organization a cutting edge (or smartness) compared with the rest:

• Gives service to its customers

This is a key to ANY company or organization providing a product or service. First you give service to your existing customers. To win other customers, you can compete in any of the four P’s (Product, Place, Price and Promotion). More recently, three more P’s have been added to the marketing mix: People, Process and Physical Evidence. People focus on who uses the product or service, Process on how it reaches the customer and finally Physical Evidence is demonstrating other customers’ satisfaction, which is proof of customer service.

• When it suits them (the customer)

Have you tried to give service when the customer isn’t there? Not a good idea. Service happens when the rubber hits the road, so to speak. Service is live, attentive and can be done in a number of ways over a number of different media. But a company or organization should implement those channels that their customers ask for, or will ask for. For example, I don’t expect service if it will endanger my business; Say my bank wants to give me advice and uses an unsecured way of doing it, I would refuse such service. I don’t expect, or want, service if I am involved in something else; If my computer provider calls me when I am with a customer to help me sort out my network card which is not working, I am not too happy. Service is and always will be when it suits me, the customer, otherwise it is a nuisance.

• Has a mobile way of working

First of all; define mobile way of working! Is it that I can bring my laptop anywhere I want to? Is it that I have one number to my fixed phone and the same to my mobile? Is it that I can choose any of the above? Second, if my doctor is mobile when I come to the emergency room, I will not be too happy; I want him there, not mobile. Sorry for the bad example, but mobility is great, but not for everyone. It will, for sure, be for more and more people, but for everyone? Don’t think so. To measure if a company is smart based on a specific mode of accessing communication services is like covering your one eye and trying to measure the distance between two trees. Very tricky, if possible at all. And really is mobility not a cutting edge anymore? I think it is commodity, no matter how you slice it we expect to be able to take a number of office features with us, on the road, in our home office or while off site.

• Can share relevant internal systems.

This is also about definitions. What is a relevant internal system? Internet banking, e-government and other implementations are great. This is really about being smart. Doing more with less, or giving more information to the customer. Help customers to help themselves. Let partners know shipping status, get ordering details, or service case details. But is this is the hands of a communications supplier? Or is it really about publishing information, sharing and presenting it using web services, IVR system and other technologies?

A really good communication strategy starts with identifying who the customer is, how they wish to communicate, and then implementing a reactive and responsive solution that adapts and grows with the customer and organization.

Well, ok, a definition of a “smart company” is kind of good to get at least my juices running. But claiming that these four areas makes an organization smarter than others and then saying it “mirrors how good companies are in using information and communications technology” is not fair. And when they say they “hope together to be able to raise this average”, it becomes clear that their real purpose is to sell, sell, sell. And that is ok, I guess, but not smart marketing. The intent is to be objective but their arguments just became subjective and very biased.

Just my two cents anyway.

Tags: Mobile UC, Mobility, Unified Communications, Unified Communications Information by Jason Andersson
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