RIM Exec on Why BlackBerry Mobile Voice System (MVS) Is the Future of Enterprise Unified Communications
Sick of sticking around the office waiting for that last important call? RIM's director of software product management says its Mobile Voice System (MVS) can seamlessly merge your desktop and BlackBerry to eliminate such headaches, help manage your "cellular identity," and much more.
CIO — It's been more than a year since Research In Motion (RIM) first announced its BlackBerry Mobile Voice System (MVS) at the 2007 Wireless Enterprise Symposium (WES), and even though early adopters like Dell and RIM itself are still only in pilot stages of deployment, the company says MVS is one of its most important projects and will shape the future of enterprise telephony--and, on a broader scale, unified communications.
"We're going to do for office PBXs what we've been doing for office mail servers for a decade," said Mike Lazaridis, RIM president and co-CEO, during his keynote in front of crowd of nearly 5,000 WES attendees.
The product helps organizations "cut the cord," in Lazaridis's words, by merging traditional desktop phone systems with BlackBerry smartphones. The MVS connects to PBXs via organizations' BlackBerry Enterprise Servers (BES), so communications are secure and all users can be located and authenticated. And many of the features available via corporate telephone systems, such as quick extension dialing and direct-to-voice-mail functionality, become available via BlackBerry.
"I'm now dedicating all my time to [MVS]" says David Heit, RIM's director of software product management. In the past, Heit played a major role in the creation of such core RIM offerings as the BlackBerry Mobile Data System (MDS), an application development framework, and the BlackBerry Enterprise Server (BES), which helps organizations securely connect corporate mail clients and systems to BlackBerry devices.
A Work In Progress
The first BlackBerry MVS products hit the market last November, and the complete system is fully available to corporate customers, though Heit admits, RIM still has a lot of work to ensure that the MVS supports all the PBXs from Cisco, Avaya and the remaining 25 or so leading PBX vendors.
Call forwarding or call routing products from service providers, wireless carriers and other vendors have been around for years, but one capability that sets RIM's MVS apart is the ability to retain caller ID information. For instance, if a call from a customer is placed to the desk phone of a MVS user, the BlackBerry will ring and the correct caller ID information will display on the handheld's screen. And all data is routed through an organizations' BES before hitting the corporate PBX, according to Heit.
"For the mobile person, I don't have to worry about missing my desk phone calls or worrying about the hanging around the office waiting for a call," Heit says. "I'll catch the important ones [on my BlackBerry]," and know exactly who's calling--assuming caller ID information is available.
Heit recalls a recent trip he made to Hawaii. While standing outside a park near a Pearl Harbor Memorial in Honolulu, he received a call on his business line. As he answered and began his conversations, an aircraft carrier sounded a piercing horn as it left the harbor behind him.
"'Waterloo?,' the caller said. 'I didn't think that was anywhere near an ocean. Wow. I didn't have a clue that you weren't in the office'," Heit says, describing the call. "And I don't let on that I'm away from work."
