* Enterprise convergence gear on tap
Dual-mode handsets that support voice over cellular and Wi-Fi networks are due to ship this quarter and next from companies such as Fujitsu-Siemens, Motorola, Nokia, Samsung, and UTStarcom. Mobile phones with dual-mode Wi-Fi and cellular voice capabilities could help users gain a single business phone number that works wherever they are without having to reinitiate calls when they cross network borders.
While the industry awaits converged network service offerings from mobile carriers, the following announcements were made recently that should help enterprises ready themselves for dual-mode.
* Aruba Wireless Networks
The company said last week it would enter the enterprise FMC market in phases. The current phase aims at readying the Aruba WLAN environment for latency-sensitive voice traffic with call admission control and battery power-saving features. The company said it would add Wi-Fi-to-cellular handoff to its mobility controllers in the first half of 2007, would supply open APIs for IP PBX integration, and is working with several European carriers to integrate its FMC components with the carriers’ Unlicensed Mobile Access (UMA) FMC offerings.
* Cisco
In October, it announced it would acquire Orative Corporation, a San Jose integrated communications start-up. Infrastructure companies like Cisco, Avaya, Nortel, and others make the PBX phone number the user’s business number and integrate it with existing corporate directories in multimedia communications servers, which also house users’ cellular numbers for simultaneous ringing or handoff. Orative, on the other hand, has focused on making the cell phone and cell number the primary business communications tool. Currently, Orative runs its own directory in its own multimedia communications server, so interesting integration efforts with corporate directories will be in order here.
* NEC
The company plans to offer in January a SIP Presence Server for enterprises. Tom Grady, product line manager, NEC Unified Solutions, explains that when the server senses that the user is leaving the Wi-Fi network, because the AP-to-handset signal is weakening, it alerts the IP PBX to set up a network call to the cellular number. The session won’t drop, he said, but the caller will be on hold for a couple of seconds while the transition takes place.
* Siemens Enterprise Communications
The company announced a Wi-Fi-to-cellular appliance, Mobility Manager, which it demonstrated in prototype form at the CeBit show earlier this year. It manages dual-mode Wi-Fi-to-cellular without session disruption using a single phone number, says Luc Roy, vice president of product planning. He adds that the company has put corresponding client software on HTC dual-mode handsets and is “agnostic” to the cellular network technology (CDMA- vs. GSM-based) in the mobile WAN.
