Quality and Caveats: UC Moblity

It’s important to remember that mobile does not necessarily mean wireless. As in the case of a distributed call center, workers may move fluidly between offices, and unified communications (UC) systems should be able to deliver similar experiences across these differing environments.

As a result, one of the first things a company should examine is the quality of the connection and environment in predictable, repeating employee locations, such as a home office. In general, a cable or even DSL connection should support a satisfactory suite of UC functionality, including video, at about 1.5 Mbps or above.

However, in cases when video will be used for business, it’s important to assess not the average networking throughput to the client device(s) but the minimum throughput, as this will determine whether video will suffer from stuttering and dropped frames. Companies may need to invest in higher quality client adapters and better router/access point equipment in order to ensure adequate performance levels. (See our feature, Why Your Workplace Wi-Fi Struggles at http://bit.ly/H5DyuF for more on this.)

Another concern with mobile UC is making assumptions about mobile application functionality. For example, an application that users enjoy on desktop platforms might rely on right-click menu functionality, but on a tablet there is no right-side button to click. This could put a crimp in collaboration situations in which mobile users find themselves unable to match the editing and creation functions being performed by their colleagues. Thus it’s important for managers to trial trial shared applications in mobile UC deployments, especially when those apps are being run across multiple client types.

These are not insurmountable issues by any stretch. They mostly require an emphasis on advance planning and consultation with UC vendors and service providers. With this diligence done, UC can play a tremendously positive role in companies and transform the effectiveness of their mobile forces.

“We like to think not so much about the impact on the end user but the impact on the business itself in terms of how it can pull latency out of the business process by bringing people together,” says Allan Mendelsohn, Director of Unified Communications Solutions Marketing at Avaya. “That’s where we define unified communications and collaboration as bringing together the right people with the right information to deliver business results in real time. It’s how we use unified communications to orchestrate and facilitate how that’s going to happen.”

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