The Anytime, Anywhere Business

Mobility is here to stay. As much as 40 percent of U.S. workers now have jobs that could be done from outside the office at least part of the time. By some estimates, more than three-quarters of the workforce will be mobile by 2013. The Internet, mobile networks, web-based services, the Cloud are all redefining the workplace.

Is your company ready to be truly mobile? The bad news: probably not. The good news: you are by no means alone.  Most businesses, from the FORTUNE 500® on down, are not ready for today’s mobile enterprise.

“Today’s mobile employees are different,” notes the consulting firm Frost and Sullivan in a recent report, Prepare Your Enterprise for the Mobile Revolution: Boost the Bottom Line with Mobile UC. “They may not travel routinely for work, but they are working routinely from home, on their commute, evenings and weekends, and so on. Deciding on a mobile policy will be one of the biggest budget and support challenges for companies in the years to come, and it will involve business decisions as much as technology ones.”

When crafting a mobile strategy, Frost & Sullivan recommends focusing on the following:

Your communications infrastructure: You need a flexible, scalable communications architecture that integrates office phones and mobile phones and delivers capabilities including single-number reach. Frost & Sullivan calls this “fixed-mobile convergence.”

Device independence: The mobile revolution is being driven by consumer devices. Make sure you have a communications infrastructure that lets employees choose their own device (from a set of standard options) and provides business applications for communications and collaboration. This gives you control over employee use of handhelds, but at a lower cost; and it lets users easily toggle between “personal” and “business” identities.

Consistent interface: Deploy a solution that provides a complete set of voice, data and video capabilities in a single integrated experience, including basic and advanced telephony features, integration with the corporate directory, and unified messaging.

Presence: Presence is a capability that makes it easy to find the right person at the right time using the most efficient form of communication—office phone, mobile, text, e-mail, video, etc. It’s a must-have in today’s mobile workplace.

For more on the mobile workplace and to read the full Frost & Sullivan report, go to http://www.avaya.com/usa/resource/assets/awards/Avaya%20EU%20Award%20_FINAL_%20(2).pdf.