We've noticed substantial progress in the last six months on mobile unified communications: both telephony system and handset suppliers have added a wide range of features and we believe that infrastructure market has hit "critical mass" by providing users with a wide range of choices. So today we'd like to point those interested in shopping for a mobile UC solution to a free buyer's guide written by Brockmann & Company, a consulting & advisory firm serving enterprise, high-tech equipment and application vendors, and service providers.

This buyer's guide defines the availability of features for mobile UC from an array of vendors with unique target markets, channels and customers. The principal suppliers covered in the report include Alcatel-Lucent, Avaya, CounterPath, DiVitas, NEC, Nortel, OnRelay, Research in Motion, Siemens Enterprise Communications and Tango Networks. The guide summarizes vendors' solution capabilities as of April 1, 2009, and takes into account both current and planned features -- discussing feature availability by vendor, devices supported for mobile UC services, and enterprise telephony platforms supported.

The fact that customers have so many choices suggests that mobile UC applications have progressed to the point of consistently delivering capabilities that improve the productivity and security of mobile workers.

Buyers should note that not all features work the same way on all devices or may not be supported on all devices. The actual user experience will depend on the combination of system features presented here, the mobile operator services and the devices supported -- any of which can and frequently do change at any time, without warning. Buyers should always check with vendors for the latest feature availability, use case definition and device support, and should always verify claimed functionality with product demonstrations and trials prior to purchase.

You can review the entire report here. Our thanks to Brockman and company for making this report available for free to the public.

Steve Taylor is president of Distributed Networking Associates and publisher/editor-in-chief of Webtorials. Larry Hettick is a principal analyst at Current Analysis.