Enterprises need to prioritize mobile unified communications

The need for secure, reliable, and easy-to-use communication tools has given rise to unified communications (UC), a strategy that integrates multiple modes of communication under one management and security umbrella. The result is more effective communication, better collaboration, and a boost to security and regulatory policies. With more and more enterprise employees relying on mobile devices, it's time for IT departments to make mobile unified communications (MUC) a priority.

The most important benefit of MUC is that enterprises are able to break away from the control of traditional consumer-centric, operator and third-party communication tools. Communication is an important enterprise resource; MUC is a tool that is easier to manage and scale, and MUC provides visibility and control that is critical to enterprise IT deployments. These advantages will make MUC the main provisioning strategy and mechanism for enterprise communications in the next five to ten years.

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What is Mobile Unified Communications?

The “unified” part of MUC means that all modes available in contemporary enterprise communications, along with the associated analytics and reporting, are provided within a single management and security umbrella. Key capabilities required include:

• Messages. This is similar to the text messaging (SMS/EMS/MMS) services and similar public services (Facebook Messenger, Linkedin Messaging, etc.) provided by telecom operators, and also includes instant messaging (IM) and chat services. MUC's advantage in this regard is security and record keeping; telecom services clearly lack these features.
• Email. In most cases, email can be integrated into the MUC to facilitate tracking of communications with external parties. However, over time, the MUC may replace all internal corporate communications.
• Voice. Voice telephony (IP) is a key core component of UC and must include one-to-one and conferencing (many-to-many) capabilities, and of course voicemail.
• Documents. All documents, images, faxes, videos, and meeting recordings (including video) required by productivity applications must be retained and easily retrievable and accessible to authorized users. Media conversion between domains (e.g., automatically generated text of voice conversations) is also a desired feature. Backup, archiving, encryption, and support for any necessary regulatory and policy compliance (e.g., HIPAA) are also essential.
• Management. Like most IT functions today, console applications must include policy definition, configuration, identity management, onboarding, workgroup definition and management (including the potential need to implement multiple and even overlapping temporary closed user groups), integrity management (via failover), and usage monitoring, including cost control for carrier communications services.

Adding mobility to UC also introduces new considerations, as described below.

While desktop UC is typically centered around a dedicated desktop device, most MUC implementations are based on applications running on Android and iOS. Therefore, it is important to ensure that the enterprise BYOD policy that specifies allowed device/mobile OS pairs also indicates requirements for these applications. MUC brings location independence and dynamic mobility to UC, and being purely IP-based, MUC does not actually require the use or even knowledge of a given device's phone number. We even foresee a day when MUC will only offer data plans, with all other communication services provided by the MUC, thereby stimulating mobile phone sales.

As mobile devices have become equal to PCs in power and utility, MUCs have become more powerful and are often implemented as point products. The main benefit of MUCs is the collaborative features necessary to increase information mobility and team productivity. Features can include not only familiar team productivity applications such as document processing and spreadsheets, but also shared calendars, project management features, and presentations, including shared and multi-user "whiteboards" for drawing and annotating ideas in real time.

Some MUC implementations also include personal information management capabilities, essentially integrating all individual and group workflows within the MUC security and management framework. Some MUC implementations implement effective private social media capabilities, although the specific feature sets vary widely.

While the model for MUC integration has evolved separately, and can, of course, still be used as such, the core appeal of MUC is the privacy of a closed user base, anytime, anywhere accessibility (as well as temporarily delayed access), and management visibility that is essential to contemporary corporate communications. Depending on the specific CRM strategy of a particular enterprise, MUC may even add value in outbound telemarketing, customer service and support, and the availability of key staff at any time/anywhere a customer needs attention, as many of the above features can easily be turned into customer-facing advantages in many cases.

MUC Deployment Options

There are three broad possibilities for MUC deployment:

• MUC products do not require hardware other than servers and mobile client devices. Servers are typically located on the enterprise's premises and can often be hosted on virtual machines, minimizing expenses.
• Cloud services. MUC is increasingly being provisioned as a cloud-based service. The cloud computing approach simplifies deployment, extends time, improves reliability, and reduces overall operational costs. Some vendors offer mobile unified communications as a service (MUCaaS), which applies a managed services strategy to many other elements of today's IT and networks. Through the MUC management console in the cloud, MUCaaS provides comprehensive mobility without any form of additional local infrastructure.
• Do-it-yourself integration. If a limited set of MUC functionality is the goal (for example, if an IT shop wants to keep Outlook's email and calendar), the capabilities of various products can be used. A popular choice is the open source Asterisk IP-PBX, used with an appropriate SIP client. However, the disjointed management of functionality achieved with this approach is less than ideal.

Some of the major suppliers in the MUC space include:

• Cisco offers a range of MUC products, including MUCaaS as well as various Webex capabilities.
• Digium provides a hosted MUC capability that can be integrated with many other communication capabilities and services.
• Microsoft offers MUC for businesses through Office 365 and Skype.
• Mitel is a pioneer in business phone systems and, thanks to its acquisition of ShoreTel, it offers extensive MUC capabilities.
• RingCentral offers mobile clients for iOS and Android.
• Whatsapp provides a telecommunication service with emphasis on voice, messaging and security through end-to-end encryption.

We also expect that many, if not most, collaboration and messaging vendors will eventually move into the MUC space through feature enhancements or even acquisitions as customers begin to demand more integrated, one-stop shopping. As we have seen with enterprise mobility management, innovations that start as point products often fail to achieve broad adoption until such a rollout occurs.

Effective MUC strategies

There are four key elements to a successful MUC deployment:

• Needs analysis. This requires looking at current, future, and growth scenarios, including geographic (even global) expansion and overall network traffic needs, including capacity analysis to ensure there is enough headroom to handle simultaneous traffic such as voice. A similar analysis of network latency needs to be done. A pilot deployment is often recommended before this. If latency is found to be an issue, then a cloud-based deployment may need to consider edge servers.
• Vendor capabilities. These include the feature set required across all modalities; range of device support (applications); reliability/availability/ease of use; services, support, help desk, consulting, and custom offerings; agreements, pricing, and terms; and APIs for extensibility. Also today, MUC feature sets and implementations vary widely.
• Usage policies and user relationships. These policies include written communications policies, which are similar in nature to acceptable use and BYOD policies and can be merged into those in some cases. Note that while unlimited texting and voice are now common in cellular service plans, unlimited data is not, so BYOD reimbursement policies may need to be adjusted. Also important are internal marketing, education, training, support, and feedback collection. Note that user privacy is increasingly an issue; this is best handled in a manner similar to the "sandbox" of a mobile content management solution, where enterprise communications are separate and distinct from communications in the purely personal sphere, and MUC constitutes a form of dual (or even multi) role communications service.
• Operational and management requirements. These include the usual console functionality, ease of use, visibility features, alerting, and analytics.

Finally, given the mission-critical nature of the MUC, its deployment might be a good time to consider SD-WAN as a way to improve overall network reliability, in this case by ensuring access through multiple ISPs.

Using MUC

As mentioned above, we believe that MUC will become the primary provisioning strategy and mechanism for enterprise communications over the next five to ten years. We also expect the eventual merger of networking and telecom to be aided in large part by BYOD-centric communications. Yes, there may be political and personnel issues here, but we all agree that phone lines and traditional PBXs are completely obsolete. Furthermore, MUC is fully compatible with WLAN and cellular services, and is a great fit for all IP 5G services as they become common over the next five years.

We recommend that organizational IT departments start exploring MUC alternatives if they haven’t already done so. The field will continue to evolve, especially through the addition of additional functionality, but the MUC solutions available today are already working hard in organizations of all sizes and missions.