The Senior Marketing Manager at Aruba Networks, an HP Company, Manish Bhardwaj expresses his opinion how the desk phone is being made redundant by the emergence of mobile unified communication adoption. And what organizations need to do in order to embrace mobility and innovation.
You are constantly on the move and spend a majority of your working time no more than an arm’s length from your phone. So why is a clunky desk phone your main form of communication in the office? Exactly why is your office phone still tethered to your location?
The next big mobile app is voice. People prefer Wi-Fi hands down, and voice is no exception. In fact, in a study done in 2014, 69% of people prefer Wi-Fi to 4G/LTE or wired connections.
We’re seeing a red-line acceleration of mobile unified communication (UC) adoption among customers. With Microsoft Lync, Facetime, Skype and Jabber or a similar tool, everything you need for that critical business call is right there on your laptop, tablet or smartphone. And you can instantly video chat or spin up a collaboration session for a face-to-face working session. No more being tied to your desk phone or coaxing the videoconferencing system in the conference room.
Cutting the desk phone cord does more than just make employees happy. It allows you to design your organization’s workspace in accordance to how people want to work today. Businesses are freed from rigid rows of cubicles and workers can have more frequent and spontaneous interactions. Creativity abounds in an open, fluid environment. Plus, the rising population of #GenMoble employees (defined as an emerging group of people for whom smartphones have gone beyond personal entertainment and BYOD – in fact, they’re now shaping their lives, especially their working lives, around mobile devices) expect high levels of collaboration and favour this less formal atmosphere.
Build the foundation
How do you deliver a business-class experience for mobile UC without making the helpdesk light up with can-you-hear-me-now complaints? Lousy voice quality, annoying echoes and outright dropped calls interrupt the flow of business and are frankly unacceptable by today’s standards. People expect the same high quality experience for phone calls and other mobile apps, no matter what network they’re on.
802.11ac is the first step. Gigabit Wi-Fi delivers in crowded mobile environments and with unforgiving applications like voice. Beyond wireless capacity and coverage, your WLAN must ensure a superior quality of service for voice across the enterprise network. SDN applications are making it easier to gain greater application visibility and deliver a quality user experience for unforgiving apps like voice and video.
At a network crossroads
IT leaders have a decision to make. Do you stay the course with wireless that provides convenient connectivity or do you demand better from your network? Embracing mobility means building a network infrastructure that’s ready to meet the demands of business-critical applications like voice—and is the foundation for the coming wave of innovation. It means building a foundation that can take advantage of contextual data and orchestrate connectivity to support mobile engagement, intelligent workplace and the Internet of Things.
