In today’s flexible and fast-moving business environment, employees are never in one place for very long.
Workers can be just about anywhere: at the office, between appointments, on business travel or working from home. Because of that mobility, they need a mobile device that enables them to conduct business regardless of location with support of all professional telephone features they are used to have in the office. With Fixed Mobile Convergence employees can enjoy access to enterprise telephony and data from any location, so that they can better engage in business while they are on the go.
Fixed Mobile Convergence (FMC) is the software-based communication application that integrates remote and mobile phones within an organization’s enterprise telephony network. It provides facilities and features to smartphones and other mobile phones that organizations generally only support on fixed office phones. As a result, a smartphone will receive internal and external PBX calls as if it is a fixed office phone. The mobile phone will also work together with fixed phones supporting features like simultaneous ring, move calls between smartphone and fixed phone, etc. Employees can use their smartphone to make calls through the company’s PBX network and these calls will appear to the called parties as enterprise calls. The calls can be made either “free-of-charge” through WiFi or via the mobile network.
First of all employees can thus use their mobile phones anywhere in the world as an integrated extension of the company network. They can be reached on a single business number and can rely on that they will not miss any important call. They have full office PBX communications facilities like call transfer, central voicemail and directory as well as operator assistance.
Organization can provide mobile flexibility to staff, and still rely on the fact that they stay connected, even e.g. as member of a call center. Employees can use their smartphone on the corporate WiFi network when within its range. Calls are transferred from the WiFi network to the public cellular network, and back again, if needed saving on mobile calling costs. External calls can be made through the company’s switch – at regular company calling costs, so including least cost call routing through company networks, while personal mobile devices can be used in conjunction with enterprise security credentials
Adding Fixed Mobile Convergence to a company network is done by basically adding two software components: the FMC controller and the smart phone clients. The controller represents all associated smartphones as SIP extensions in the PBX, providing true integration.
FMC is available on a wide and increasing range of phones. NEC’s uMobility FMC solution for instance works with any recent iOS, Android and BlackBerry smartphone device and can be added to existing NEC communication platforms such as iS3000, SV8100, SV8300, SV8500 and 3C. The uMobility Controller runs on off-the-shelf Intel server hardware.