Verizon is making a concerted effort to bring its enterprise mobility and unified communications options up to industry standards. In the past, Verizon has been criticized as taking a scattershot and sometimes shoddy approach at enterprise solutions and falling short of expectations. Verizon executives know this and are trying to change.
This week at CTIA in San Diego, Verizon unveiled two new enterprise solutions – a private corporate application store and a mobile unified communications client that are intended to take some of the lay-hanging fruit enterprise options and help tie Verizon’s enterprise efforts together.
The private enterprise application store is exactly what it sounds like. It has the ability to push out a select group of apps to a select group of users in whatever way the IT systems administrator sees fit. For instance, if you want your marketing team to have Facebook for iPad but you do not want them to have a gaming app, the IT department can silo what apps go where.
The end user sees exactly what the system administrator wants them to see and not what else is getting pushed out to other users. One thing that is overlooked in the mobile era is the fact that software dispersal has been completely revolutionized through the app store. There are no disks, there is little in the ways of an IT manager having to physically access the device. Enterprise applications can be pushed from the IT desk over the air to the end user.
Mobile Unified Communications Client and Dock
Verizon has been working on improving its unified communications client for some time. The Verizon mobile UC client and docking station is a software client that is trying to bring UC capabilities to a hybrid mobile-desktop environment. The solution has four main areas of interest.
- IP-PBX
- Call routing and switching
- Business identity
- Docking station
The interesting part is the business identity aspect of the new client. A user can switch between business and personal identities on their device with a flick of a button. If you want to call somebody from your business identity from your mobile phone, it is easy to make the switch.
The docking station allows users to hook up a smartphonew with a Micro USB and switch a cellular call to a landline call, without hanging up the phone. The docking station then becomes the PBX router and can do whatever a normal IP-PBX can do. The dock itself is $125 with a $7 monthly fee.
Verizon realizes that it cannot replace the existing enterprise PBX structure. These are large, complicated systems that would cost tens of million to be ripped out of their walls. So, Verizon is looking to make its UC compatible with the existing enterprise options from Avaya and Cisco.
Enterprise denizens: Has Verizon taken the first steps to fix its corporate woes? Or is this just a “me too” leap for a carrier that will continue to be behind?
