The UC, FMC Opportunity Arrives

Do Carriers Care?

Verizon Business (VZ) for one plans to tap SMBs with hosted applications written to Cisco WebEx Connect. The carrier also is adding managed services support for Cisco Unified Communications Manager and Cisco Unified Contact Center for large-business and government customers.

“Mobility is a crucial part of the overall solution,” explained Rick McConnell, Cisco’s vice president and general manager of the UC business unit. “We are humbled by the number of mobile devices sold. It’s highly critical to integrate the mobile carrier and the enterprise world and the Web 2.0 world because these are all the parts of how we live and work.”

The Mindset

The offers might be coming to market for service providers, but they need to change their sales approach to the market as well. It’s not just about having the right, collaborative things to sell; it’s also about having the motivation to sell them.

Luc Roy, vice president of enterprise mobility at Siemens (SI), which offers the Openscape UC and FMC engine, said he’s not sure how interested service providers really are as a whole in this opportunity.

“The mobile devices are owned by carriers, but what we've done is create an enterprise-centric solution without needing the carrier; and we can do mobile UC independent of the carrier,” said Roy. “That’s because a lot of customers want to own their UC solution. And also, in hosted and managed service, many times you’re forced to adopt a mobile number as the primary number, or find a way around using Wi-Fi for toll bypass. There has to be a shift toward operators being willing to offer the enterprise what they really want. They'll have to wear the enterprise shoes and see what they need.”

It’s questionable whether operators are willing to make the effort, according to Pejman Roshan, vice president of marketing and a company founder of Agito Networks, maker of the RoamAnywhere mobility router, which intelligently connects users to the best available wireless network (enterprise Wi-Fi, cellular, home, hotspot). RoamAnywhere interoperates with gear from Cisco, among others.

“FMC is eating away a little bit of the revenue from the mobile operators — and they have to get closer to the enterprise to get a piece of that,” said Roshan. “But carriers have been more focused in on the consumer for about a year, year and a half, pushed by the iPhone.”

He cited a recent BlackBerry report, which said that 60 percent of account additions came from non-enterprise users, which as a whole represent 40 percent of the base. “There are a lot of consumers, several orders of magnitude more than enterprise users, who are getting a bit neglected right now.”

That said, carriers are aware that there’s a need for hosted UC. “Just offering the wireless side doesn't fulfill it,” said Roshan. “So they're all approaching companies like us and wanting to be part of the reseller channel to offer a complete solution; really they're playing a systems integrator role, and so will bundle up Agito, Windows Mobile handsets and Cisco for service revenue and hardware, plus a unique wireless position to bring. But it’s not true hosted service.”

Never fear, Roshan said. “It’s a natural evolution,” he explained. “Enterprises will deploy themselves, then look to have a carrier manage it, and then, ultimately, there will be a demand for a hosted solution for the masses. We are on the cusp now of moving to the managed model. I think we've proven this out, customers are looking at it and want it to be managed, putting that pressure on the carriers, and we're working with all of them at a high-level engagement.”

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