It’s my job, but my eyes still glaze over when I
hear IP PBX companies tell me about their different phone models. This IP
phone has a three-line display, model number X101CFP, that one does color
and has two speed dials, etc. It can get excruciating. While IP phones are
great, they are pretty similar these days unless they have bright color
screens. I may be a bit jaded, but then again, I may have also seen every
IP phone that there is to see.
So I would like to thank Ericsson (news),
a maker of IP PBXs, for not focusing on how many lines their phones have
on the screen but instead, for waking me up in a meeting by telling me
something I never heard before and frankly never thought of. Not that I am
a genius or anything, but I do sit around in my spare time and think about
telecom and what products would be great to have. Call me bizarre, I just
hope it makes me better at what I do.
First, a note on Ericsson. They were a leader in the
IP PBX space around 1999 when they acquired a smaller company, TouchWave,
that made an IP PBX (review).
After about a year or two, Ericsson seemed to slip off my personal IP PBX
radar. While promoting themselves in other countries, they seemed to fade
quickly from the
US
. They are now back and they say better than ever.
One of the reasons for this newfound optimism about
the
US
is that they have a new master distributor here, MarketShare Telecom who will
work with existing resellers and look for new ones as well. If you are a
reseller, give them a call.
So, assuming you believe Ericsson will be a force in
the IP PBX space, read on and see how they differentiate themselves from
all of their competitors. Ericsson also sells mobile phones and while
these phones seem to be disappearing from the
US
market, SonyEricsson (news),
a joint venture between Ericsson
(news)
and Sony (news),
is doing quite well. I use a SonyEricsson phone, the T610, and my last
phone was from the company as well. While I have written a scathing
article about the service and support from the company, I consistently
marvel at the leading edge devices they produce.
We are becoming a more mobile planet and yet
corporate PBXs still haven’t learned that they need to be more
accommodative of us mobile workers. Ericsson is bridging this crucial gap
between mobile workers and PBXs by allowing the mobile devices and PBXs to
be tightly integrated.
This is not something to just gloss over; it is a
revolution in PBX technology. It is something we will take for granted in
the future. It is something that road warriors will all need… Like a
Blackberry or similar device today, you can’t afford not to be connected
to your office. Finally, there is a way to connect to the telephony
portion of your work.
Many of you managing PBXs and mobile workers probably
don’t even realize you have a problem as your mobile workers have cell
phones. This is not a solution, as it means the immediate loss of
corporate control over communications. First of all, you aren’t able to
play a standard corporate greeting or on-hold message and worst of all, if
an employee resigns and you don’t get the cell phone back, you have to
deal with reprogramming another phone or somehow ask the customer to call
the corporate PBX instead.
Using SonyEricsson’s P900 phone and other IP
devices you can take advantage of something called Mobile Extension which
gives mobile users more than 500 PBX features on these devices. Using a
secure connection, you are able to access short numbers, conference calls,
diversion and attendant support.
You can log into an ACD and become an agent if you
like. You can access DNS and do a directory search over GPRS. You can
transfer calls and take advantage of presence. Currently this only works
with Ericsson PBXs, but they hope to make it more broadly available in the
future.
My friends, I have seen the future of telecom and it is the tight coupling
of mobile devices and back office PBXs -- and it is here today. See http://www.ericsson.com for details.
Please talk back to
me in our forums
Rich Tehrani is TMC's president. He welcomes your comments.
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