Conversationware

I pinched that phrase from AVST.

We’ve been dreaming about usable mobile working since forever.

Anyhow, having been wandering around with a Mobile Broadband connection from Vodafone for a couple of weeks, I now think that working anywhere is finally a reality!

- at least for us in the UK - I’m not entirely sure where else this might be available at such reasonable cost - £25 per month according to the website.

Vodafone’s website also lists further down the page that it limits users to a 3 GB monthly total. It then refers to the terms and conditions - but I defy anyone to find the T’s and C’s that apply.

Typical huge company website - completely useless to navigate.

I reserved judgement for a while, but everywhere I’ve been for two weeks has been fine. No mountain tops or anything you understand, but Burton on Trent was ok, a typical middle england place. So, hence this mini review.

Everything is great with Mobile Broadband.

My only small gripe is a nagging system tray piece of software that displays 7.2MB at all times, even if a speedcheck does show most places to be giving me 250kb download.

It almost looks designed to hoodwink the user, which is probably not the intention, although, when you look at the marketing spiel on the website….you could be forgiven for thinking otherwise.

There is no need to hoodwink us Vodafone.

That’s because 250kb download is enough for most everything, including picking up voice messages via Outlook and VPN (although I would stay away from web development, as your browser will choose to fool you by showing a reduced bandwidth version of your site).

So, finally I am free from those useless wireless hot spot business models that drove my irritability through the roof. Why on earth wouldn’t Hotels provide their guests with broadband access, when it is obvious to the casual observer that it would attract more business for them?

Beats me. And now, Mobile Broadband will be beating them.

Here’s me in a hotel room testing a You Tube video across the modem…..no problem!

Why spend time, sweat and tears writing your predictions for the coming year.

Relax in your armchair instead, with your google persistent search turned on for the first week in January, and peruse until you find some you agree with - then link to them.

My interest is in how communications can help with business, in all senses of the word and to my mind, the best on the subject is a great article by Shomik Banerjee summarising 2007 and looking at 2008 for enterprise communications. Really good job.

Of course, I have to comment, or it’s not worth linking

Shomik doesn’t say if the headlined views below are in order of importance, or likelihood;

• A) PBX is passé, ‘UC’ is the buzzterm
• B) The Focus Market for Enterprise Telephony is Shifting to SMB
• C) Enterprise Mobility is ‘Hot’
• D) Collaboration Gains Fresh Impetus
• E) SOA and Web Services Gain Traction
• F) Open Source and Open System Gain Mindshare

In terms of market impact, I would have them in roughly the reverse order.

(maybe not by the end of 2008 though)

Another good read is by Charlie Bess on the EDS fellows ‘next big thing blog’. I like the Green IT idea, and I guess this is just an acceleration of the virtualization movement, which has been manic paced in any event.

Feel free to link to others in the comments!

The business case for Unified Communications usually centres around individual productivity and time savings. But generally ROI for UC is thought to be quite hard.

Yet, there is definitely a wider case to be made.

Yes, we can save individuals time, but that rarely impresses the people with the cheque books. Although, if those wallets are fat enough and the industry competitive enough, then small advantages count towards communications companies getting orders.

An important string to the ROI bow has been ‘on premise’ conferencing.

Companies are increasingly spending substantial amounts on conferencing, and even more when there is a web element involved. Outsourced Audio conferencing is an easy target for a new GUI driven system.

But, in terms of ROI, there’s more to Web conferencing equipment than meets the eye.

Because of the pressured nature of Webinars to customers, plus peaky traffic often meaning a big system for sporadic requirements, and not forgetting costs of critical support and failover, it can make this a tough pitch at premises level.

For large organisations, one of the best returns for Unified Communications is the promise of reduction in premises overhead.

Technology makes it possible. For as the PC (Laptop) swallows yet another device, the phone, the desktop footprint of an employee is shrinking, and becoming ever more portable.

I know its obvious, but 25 years ago, if you wanted to work at home, you might have needed

• Typewriter
• Copier
• Fax machine
• Mobile Phone (measuring about a foot square)
• Your own franking machine
• Calculator (measuring about a foot square)

More than that, your telephone extension was practically nailed to your desk, and you couldn’t transfer calls out of the building. Your terminal definitely not!

Being able to plug in anywhere, in or out of the building, and maintaining consistent high rates of productivity is enabling shared work spaces and driving down property costs, for both growing organisations, and yes, even the old school.

One public sector organisation (a UK council) recently stated their decision to reduce their property portfolio by 30%, would comfortably provide the means to pay for all the new technology to make anywhere working a dramatic possibility. A UK Council leading the charge towards communications technology is news indeed. But, this is by no means isolated.

Even small companies are enabled by UC, probably most very small service companies (2-5) could now work without any premises at all.

Unified Communications is just one element, alongside broadband and networking, but it is an important one.

This isn’t new, but Presence and Conferencing become more useful when people are not in the same room.

Over on Aswath weblog, there is a useful suggestion on how Jajah could enable their dialing service without users having to be in front of their PC - Jajah are already promoting the ability to call without headphones - something that always put me off Skype.

I like the idea of a home phone being internet enabled, I guess everything will be before long. But if this is the case, perhaps the phonebook be online and automatically accessible by the phone display instead. 

A centralised phonebook accessible from any device, with click (press) to call would give the same experience as the PSTN, but improve it, because numbers are then also available from your desktop and from your browser enabled mobile.

The strength of Jajah, that calling is ubiquitous and doesn’t rely on any specific islands of connectivity, unlike some voip, is enhanced by giving contact information the same qualities.

Until then, phonebooks on mobile devices will continue to be a handy way of ‘encouraging’ call traffic through whichever network the devices are connected to - a lot of remote workers will still use their mobile because the numbers are on the phone….mainly because inbound callers’ details are so easy to add to the address book.

I always thought that connecting to someone (calling) should be done by clicking on a link, and that these links would ‘front’, or mask, the eventual device the call is delivered on. Abstracting contact details from the device you receive the call on would deliver us from yet another pain point - and deliver my personal holy grail, being a self updating phone book.

A phonebook that updates itself anytime a user changes device, which could be up to three or four times a day. That’s neat.

When considering Speech Recognition as an interface for anything, just think about how it is to be used, by whom and where they’re calling from.

Having used Speech Recognition to access Exchange email, calendar, contacts, my CallXpress voicemail and corporate directory for the last two years (we had Exchange 2007 functionality 2 years early from AVST), I have to say that it has been a learning experience.

The first thing to relate is that it is often more comfortable as a solitary activity.

Somehow, you can hear your own voice change when talking to a machine.

It is the trepdiation that you’ll forget the right phrase to use, along with slower and louder speech, which means you end up sounding almost like ‘British person talking to foreign person’. Like an idiot in other words, and after a very short while, a self conscious idiot.

The worst thing is knowing that any slips will result in you having to repeat yourself.

Repeating oneself (no pun intended) is irritating to have to do, not to mention the fact it also attracts instant attention from anybody around you - and thus aptly demonstrates to your colleagues that even a dumb machine can’t be bothered to listen to you.

The funny thing is, most people wait for the machine to finish talking even if they know they can interrupt and they know what the machine is going to say. Such manners abound in the UK, even to inanimate objects that you can’t see!

If you are in a car on your own, this technology is fantastic, hands free and driving licence points saving and reduces home login time sorting through email because you deleted them somewhere near Oxford.

Trust me though, using it in public is about as cool as walking along with a £10 bluetooth headset over the ear.

This link is to a very neat article (thanks Alec) , which points out that the result of worker mobility and remote working, is a growth in conference calls and a demand for presence solutions.

There is a year’s worth of telephone call log data from Cap Gemini’s 9,000 strong organisation to base this on, and so excellent data to work with.

Replacement of ‘face to face’ meetings with an increase in telephone calls and audio conferencing is an obvious one, but also, it is argued, because 80 percent of calls end up in voicemail this is driving users to pre-book calls in advance, driving costs up through multiple calls into conferencing bridges from mobile phones.

Presence is described as bound to emerge as a key element of any provider of communications services.

Trouble is, I’m positive that the Telco and mobile companies don’t see a problem with growth of calls and conferencing! “More conference calls”, “paying for calls twice” must be music to the ears.

   Solid Gold

 In fact, any presence solution, resulting in less calls going to voicemail, and less calls overall, must be an unattractive proposition for the Telco or Mobile Operator.

It will probably fall on companies to implement their own Unified Commmunications solutions, (he says hopefully) making presence enabled, on net, conference calls free of charge, together with binding their own mobile calls to the enterprise to reduce costs.

The place to start thinking about presence is with the most simple change of status.

If I’m logged in at the desktop, I may be available, but if I’m not logged in, then I may only be contactable by the telephone.

So, call me if you need to.

The ‘need to call me’ part is of most significance here, and there are two sides to the benefit of being logged out;

1. Calls from my contacts are now more sporadic, because with them knowing I’m away from my desk, it allows them to re-schedule that item of middling importance for when I AM at my laptop screen, and hence more able to deliver.

2. So, logic says, and experience bears out, that when people now call me, they have already made a decision not to wait until I return to my desk. Which means my calls are nearly always more important.

The result is that when I’m mobile, I get less calls, and they’re more important

What this means is that when you roll out presence tools, it’s important that management communicate the importance of not hiding behind the ‘make it seem like you’re offline’ tool. Instead, use busy, or not interruptable wherever possible. The distinction is important for others in their decision making.

Equally, if I log on to some mobile presence element of the tool - there needs to be distinction between mobile and desk, for the reasons above.

The fact is, managing my mobile ’status’ will probably interrupt my attention, and therefore isn’t worth the effort. The only mobile status of interest to me is whether we’re on the phone or not - which we will have to spoof, awaiting desperately needed innovation.

With that in mind, I am still a fan of the iotum approach, especially from a subject driven conversation point of view.