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TeleWare on the mobile opportunity for cloud services. By Lesley Hansen, group marketing director, TeleWare
I can imagine the frowns of puzzlement; you’re thinking surely mobile is by definition delivered from the cloud. So what is the value of this new trend towards cloud based delivery going to add to my mobile proposition as a reseller? Mobile with add ons delivered from the cloud combined with fixed mobile convergence delivered on a mobile phone are two concepts that are hard to describe. They need you to think outside of normal perceptions of the mobile phone capability but they are powerful and obvious once they are explained. They also deliver real cost savings for business.
Imagine the business without the need for a fixed PBX or fixed handsets, no cabling for voice communications, no costs of moves and changes, no licence fees for PBX applications, no scalability issues when new users are added. No need for calculations on port availability, or maintenance fees, or costs for voice switch upgrades. All you need is a mobile phone and a cloud based voice service delivered to your users. Business anywhere, delivered to any mobile phone from the cloud.
Business anywhere?
So what does business gets from this beyond the ‘one number one bill’ or earlier offerings? The business user gets the services we associate with fixed line telephony delivered to people on the move, voice, video and data, email, SMS and voicemail, all delivered to the mobile phone from the data centre. Services such as participation in hunt groups, inbound call management, voice recording and conferencing.
What does the business management get? They have a flexible, scalable and low cost of ownership voice solution with PBX type functionality without having a fixed on site PBX or an IP Centrex broadband connection for hosted voice. The connection becomes the GSM connection to the mobile. They have lower maintenance costs, less support issues, and a way to manage the mobile phone users as part of the voice infrastructure participating in reporting and monitoring systems. They can easily move location maintaining the same numbers and the same capabilities with no cost of move.
Cloud services are delivered from a datacentre rather than on premise location. However, this datacentre can connect with the mobile network to deliver add on mobile services to the users device which could be a mobile phone. It all sounds so simple!
Why the wait?
The mobile network has traditionally been a closed infrastructure. The routing of calls and services effectively controlled by operators focused on delivering cookie cutter offerings without the structure to create more integrated value added enterprise telephony services.
The opening up of the mobile spectrum and the arrival of virtual network operators has helped to create new service providers that can deliver the on-network Centrex-like service over a mobile network that is now IP friendly. Technologies like SIP and VPN have advanced to the point where communication routing is both technically possible and billable with these carriers to make it commercially viable.
For the mobile reseller this means a whole new paradigm for delivery of their customer’s voice services. At its most simplistic, the savvy reseller can provide their customer with access to fixed telephony services on the mobile making the mobile user part of the corporate voice infrastructure. At its most sophisticated the on premise PBX becomes entirely obsolete being replaced by cloud based voice applications and GSM services, and for those who want or need a desk phone a GSM based desk phone is readily available from vendors today.
What is the relevance of the cloud to mobile? It is a new paradigm, a new service, a new reseller opportunity.
http://www.telewaremobile.com/