If you're handing out mobile phones to employees, desk phones are an added expense, especially as few users master the * commands even for features as simple as forwarding and conferencing calls.
Research in Motion's (RIM) new BlackBerry Mobile Voice System will connect its business handhelds to a PABX giving mobile users full and secure access to PABX features through a straightforward interface, on a device that already has their address book.
For users, RIM Co-chief executive Mike Lazaridis sees the simplicity as very appealing, but for businesses the security is equally important. "For years I've been hoping we could somehow make the mobile take over the role of the phone that site on my desktop; I want to be connected to my company, to be able to dial PABX numbers, to know who's calling me and have them know who's calling them in a reliable authenticated way," he said.
"Your extension numbers, e-mail address, conference call PIN numbers are already there, already wirelessly synched, instead of creating a second repository that's going to get out of date. Your employees are already trained to use the BlackBerry so as a user you get the same environment you already know, but you are connected through your PABX."
RIM is using the encrypted data channel that push e-mail travels over, so the handset is securely authenticated to the PABX. That means businesses can make internal resources like directory lookups and ad hoc conference calls available to mobile users without relying on caller ID that can be faked or needing users to type in a PIN. When users place a call on the BlackBerry through the PABX, it uses the data channel to send a short encrypted data message to the BES and Ascendent servers; the PABX places the call, so that the caller ID is correct, makes an authenticated call to the BlackBerry and bridges in the person you're calling.
One advantage, as Lazaridis points out, is that "this forces calls to be done in certain ways, so the compliance issues are already dealt with."
This also gives employees a single number to give to contacts; they don't expose their mobile phone number when they don't want to and clients and customers calling them don't have to phone one number after another.
They don't have to sit through call forwarding either. The Ascendent server stores multiple numbers in the user profile and when a call comes in for the user it rings all the numbers at once, a convenience Lazaridis refers to as a 'killer feature.'
"It rings all the locations you are normally at, at the same time so if you're in your office your desk phone and your BlackBerry ring simultaneously and whichever you pick up the other stops ringing," he said.
Lazaridis refers to the PABX as the last of the four data stores that exist in most companies to go mobile, after e-mail, IM and back-end data stores and he believes there's as much to exploit as on the other stores.
He added: "Imagine a system that you don't have to train - you don't have to educate it about your company and about everybody's role - a system that learns is as it's being used, a system that allows you to mine what's in your company and do it in ways are that are powerful and self learning."
The next step is bringing them together, whether that's linking real-time IM to voice calls or exploiting the resources of the PABX by e-mail.
David Heit, senior product manager of RIM's enterprise product management team asks why people have to use different tools to do related tasks: "The real world doesn't look like distinct systems. Wouldn't it be great if I got my device and I opened up the calendar and I could see the conference system, I book a conference call and send out the invitations to my colleagues and they accept - and at 2pm next Wednesday all our BlackBerrys light up and connect automatically to the conference call and we start to talk?"
BlackBerry MVS includes the MVS client which runs on the BlackBerry, BlackBerry MVS Connectors which run on your BlackBerry Enterprise Server and Ascendent Voice Mobility Suite (software from a company RIM bought last March which interfaces with a range of traditional and IP PABXs). Lazaridis says it will work with "any IP PBX, any legacy PBX".
