Enterprises from Fortune 500 companies to hospitals to schools are adopting iPads and other tablets to replace much of the work that personal computers used to do, and the people who use these devices want to use them for a lot more than work. Many employees are more than willing to “bring their own device” if it means they can do their work on the same tablet they use in their personal life. That’s creating challenges for the corporate IT managers who need to make sure these devices can connect, and keep company information secure. It’s no surprise that one of the sessions scheduled for this week’s Enterprise Connect in Orlando is called “BYOD, Consumerization of IT: How to Cope?”
For wireless network equipment vendors, being part of the solution means being “device agnostic.” GENBAND’s Mobile Office product, introduced this week at Enterprise Connect, is meant to seamlessly connect consumer devices to corporate networks so that workers can use the same unified communications features available on their desktop, as well as the same dial plan, calling line ID and long distance plan as their main office phone. The Mobile Office solution is based on GENBAND’s A2 Communications Server, the same product that powers many of the company’s offerings for wireless service providers.
“Big enterprises are starting to look a lot more like service provders,” Kurt Krueger, GENBAND’s regional vice president for marketing the Americas channel, told RCR Wireless. “The same stuff we source for the carriers, we source for the enterprise. It’s totally carrier-grade.” Krueger says the A2 Communications Server in its current form is a beneficiary of GENBAND’s acquisition of assets from Nortel Networks. “You don’t need a giant building full of equipment anymore,” he says “A rack with a server and you’re in business.”
