Unified mobility solutions allow us to utilize different technologies while away from the workspace

The definition of the mobile worker has expanded thanks to technology advances that fulfill our need to access communications and information while away from the primary workspace. The mobile worker community has grown from a band of telecommuters to a workforce that can communicate and collaborate across several workspaces. Unified mobility solutions allow us to utilize different technologies to gain secure access to business voice, data, and video applications whenever and wherever we are. The United States has the highest percentage of mobile workers in the world. As of 2008, 72.2% of the US workforce was mobile. This number is expected to grow to 75.5% or 119.7 million workers by 20131. Providing this growing population of workers with the reach and flexibility of mobility solutions will keep them in touch with the important business of the day and help them to gain strategic advantages over the competition. What is Mobility? As the mobile worker definition has expanded, the technologies that define the mobility experience have advanced. Applications helped users extend voice and email communications via mobile devices or "smartphones" have been around for several years. Mobility solutions now allow workers to take most critical office applications with them for true "every time, everywhere" collaboration. Essentially, mobility utilizes wired and wireless technologies to bridge the barriers of distance and time to provide secure network access and a rich business collaborative experience. Reduce Missed Opportunities One of the most measurable losses in business productivity is that of a missed opportunity because an important call or voice message didn't reach you when you were away from your desk. This can happen as a result of having multiple contact numbers and voice mailboxes. The mobility answer to this problem is "single number reach." More than call forwarding, single number reach technology enables an inbound call to the main office to ring several devices simultaneously. If a call is not answered on any of the devices, a message will land in a single business voice mail. With a true mobility solution, end users no longer have to share multiple phone numbers with business contacts or check multiple voice mailboxes. Another advantage of mobility is caller ID preservation. Call forwarding systems only present the caller ID of the main office on mobile devices, which isn't helpful if you need to screen out non-urgent calls. With a mobility solution, the caller ID of the inbound party is displayed on the mobile device, giving you the flexibility to pick up the calls that you need to take. In addition, mobility can be configured to display your outbound caller ID regardless of which device you initiate your call from, as if you were sitting at your desk. Mobility makes it possible to transfer calls transparently between mobile and desk phones with the push of a button. This feature virtually eliminates call interruptions when the end user needs to leave the office during a call that was initiated on the desk phone. Conversely, calls that were started on a mobile device can be transferred to the desk phone when entering the office. The Collaboration Effect We all know that effective communication with our customers and coworkers entails more than phone calls and emails. Web-based tools such as Cisco's WebEx can bring people together from miles apart to collaborate on projects, saving companies billions of dollars in travel expenses. Not only can a mobile worker access a web conference on their laptop from home or in a hotel - they can now join the web and audio portions of a WebEx meeting from their BlackBerry mobile device. If they happen to be on the way to the office, mobility participants can seamlessly transfer their mobile WebEx sessions to a personal computer once they reach their desks. Mobile workers can initiate peer-to-peer video calls from any remote location as long as they have access to a high speed internet connection. They can also create multiple attendee video conferences from wherever they are if their office is equipped with a video conference bridge. Who Offers Mobility Solutions? Cisco Systems and BlackBerry are leaders in the development of business mobility solutions. Cisco offers Unified Mobility, which has become the industry standard for secure voice, data, and video collaboration solutions. BlackBerry, a long-time innovator in smartphone technology and mobile messaging, now offers their unique Mobile Voice System (MVS). 1More than one billion mobile workers worldwide by year's end, according to IDC - http://www.idc.com/getdoc.jsp?containerId=prUS22214110 Bruce Hoernecke is president and CEO of BBH Solutions, New York, N.Y.