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magazine
38
Unified communications
The news that senior directors and
managers rely more on smartphones
than PCs and laptops (see page 8)
will come as little surprise to office
workers, for whom smartphones have
long been the communication tool
of choice. They are easy to use and
intuitive; they contain call logs and call
histories; and they are where people
keep their contacts lists. No wonder,
people tend to reach for their mobile
before their office phone.
Smartphones are just one of the
portable devices regularly used by
office workers: others include tablets,
notebooks, Chromebooks, perhaps
even a netbook. Samsung estimates
that a typical employee now uses 3 to
5 devices in the office. Because only a
minority of these have an Ethernet port,
more and more data is sent over wireless
networks.
It is not just people’s choice of
communication device that is different:
working practices and associated
applications are also changing. Today,
there is much more emphasis on
teamwork and collaboration. This has
created demand for richer, real-time
communications, combining voice, video
and data. These bandwidth-hungry
applications put even more strain on
wireless networks.
Office design has changed too.
Today’s workers enjoy a greater choice
of work settings, from break-out areas
and relaxation zones to a variety
of meeting rooms and technology/
collaboration suites. Some organisations
have adopted flexible working and
replaced designated desks with hot
desking, remote offices and home
working.
Mobile limitations
The combination of these trends impacts
enterprises in a number of ways:
n
Unbridled use of smartphones in the
office can lead to higher costs and loss
of management control and visibility
of phone usage.Where mobile signals
are weak, it can result in dropped
calls and poor speech quality or loss
of productivity as people roam the
building looking for a better signal or a
quiet area to conduct a call, such as a
corridor or stairwell.
n
Linking aWiFi-enabled smartphone
to a company phone system so that
outbound calls are sent over landlines
or IP networks can reduce costs and
give managers more control, but this
brings problems of its own. Most
wireless networks have been designed
for notebooks: they are static and
don’t have the density needed to
support mobile phone users who may
congregate in large numbers around
a meeting room for example. Once
again, this can result in poor speech
quality, breaks in communication,
bit loss, dropped packets and re-
synchronisation problems.
n
A more mobile workforce – within
and outside a business – can create
difficulties for colleagues and customers.
People can be hard to track down; you
don’t know which number to get them
on and end up leaving messages on
several devices; you don’t know whether
they are free for a chat or whether they
are in a meeting. Lack of visibility entails
extra costs, poor productivity and bad
feeling between colleagues.
n
Inadequate wireless networks mean
that workers who move to a shared
space for collaboration and teamwork
can’t always bring their unified
communications tools with them. UC
systems combining voice, video and
data often work best on a desktop
because integration with mobile
devices is difficult and existing wireless
networks aren’t up-to-scratch. Yet,
mobile employees potentially have the
most to benefit from UC.
SamsungWireless Enterprise overcomes the limitations
of conventional wireless networks to deliver true mobile
unified communications. James Goulding reports.
Putting mobile
workers first
SamsungWireless Enterprise
To overcome the limitations of existing
arrangements, Samsung has developed
what it calls the ‘SamsungWireless
Enterprise’. Designed to support high
quality Voice over Wireless LAN and
mobile unified communications so that
users are free to move around whilst
staying permanently connected to their
collaborative processes, it has two main
elements: a wireless infrastructure that
has the capacity to support greater
mobility within the workplace; and
telephony solutions optimised for the
mobile workforce.
It also provides secure APIs for
integrating mobile device management
solutions that can improve security, for
example by automatically switching off a
phone’s camera when the user enters an
R&D facility, and simplify administration,
by making it easy to deliver voice and
data applications to a device.
Speaking at the UK launch of
SamsungWireless Enterprise, Paul
Templeton, General Manager of Samsung
Networks UK, said: “We have tried to
produce something that is simple for
people to use, that doesn’t require people
to change their working patterns. It
provides an environment that works and
doesn’t need fiddling with to deliver the
service. The smarts are hidden beneath
the surface.”
He added: “We are delivering a
Wireless LAN that is genuinely very
different to what people have today and
we are delivering a full mobility solution.
We are doing it in the Korean market and
in our first sites in the UK. This is a full
suite of services and applications and it is
available now.”
Wireless Network
Unlike traditional wireless LANs,
Samsung’s wireless network has
been designed with mobile devices
in mind. Drawing on Samsung’s $500
million investment in 4G LTE wireless
communication technology, it provides
the density and capacity needed to
support a high number of mobile users
roaming within and between public and
private wireless networks, with no drop
off when handing over from 4G toWLAN.
The combination of Samsung’s