Complexity and escalating mobile costs are inhibiting the growth of mobile solutions for businesses striving to deploy a unified communications (UC) strategy, according to experts.
Tom Perry, marketing director of Shoretel, EMEA, spoke at the ITWeb Unified Communications conference in Bryanston, this week, and pointed to mobile implementation challenges facing businesses.
He cited Gartner figures that showed global smartphone sales surged by 50% last year. “However, mobility challenges such as rising mobile costs, poor WiFi coverage, and communications complexity are making it difficult for organisations to integrate mobile devices across the enterprise.”
Ultimately, he said, mobile solutions should be simple, secure and provide a heterogeneous experience.
Perry indicated that companies which have managed to successfully reduce complexity in their networks were able to see a reduction of 15% to 30% in their UC costs.
According to Wayne D'Sa, who heads up the new business division of MTN Business Solutions, local telcos are making big investments in network and mobile infrastructure in order to drive UC adoption.
He says South African telcos are improving network infrastructure in order to deliver high-availability services for UC. “This is also being driven by four submarine cable systems that are landing on our shores: Eassy, Teams, EIG and WACS. These cables are key in terms of driving communications costs down.”
D'Sa explained that convergence of fixed-line and mobile communications will facilitate the growth of UC and enable businesses to improve productivity, efficiency and agility, as well as reduce complexity and manage risk.
UC does this by converging IT services and applications such as voice, data, video and instant messaging, which can be accessed via a central location from any device, he noted.
“Enterprises are adopting mobile solutions as part of their UC strategy and are demanding telcos make it work for them.”
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