The Phone that Wasn’t a Phone
by Laurent Philonenko, vice president and general manager, Cisco Unified Communications Business Unit
The growth in 3G cellular networks and proliferation of WiFi gave rise to one of the most compelling mobile service delivery platforms ever made.. I am pretty sure that your mind is already visualizing an iPhone. So what is it, and what does it mean for Cisco and collaboration?
First of all, it is not a phone. It is a full-fledged computer, which happens to be sleek, lightweight, and delivers a revolutionary user experience. Oh, and you can even use it as a phone since it has a speaker (two actually) and a microphone. So yes you can make phone calls like you always did. In a world of "2 b or nt 2 b, tht is = ?", how important is the phone actually?
Cisco views the iPhone an ideal platform for delivering unified communications and collaboration services to mobile users. By extending some of our core capabilities to the iPhone, we can turn audio conferences on mobile phones into a rich collaborative experience and make sure the information you need is at your fingertips.
Think of it as joining a conference by just clicking "join" when it’s time to get into the meeting and you are prompted to do so - because we have integrated your calendar and conferencing products.
Think of it as being able to see who is on the call, who is actively speaking and actually view what’s being shared with the ability to zoom in.
Think of it as seamlessly moving conferences from your iPhone to your office environment.
Think of it as really intuitive voicemail, revealing the presence and availability of the message senders, also allowing direct access to the most important messages.
Think of it has having a great interface to exploit more of your personal communications channels, which you might have overlooked so far. Bring more flexibility to your work and lifestyle with these new experiences.
Is Cisco going to stop here? No, this is just the beginning of a new era of the user experience which we are very focused on. And we are staying true to the "Anywhere, Anytime, Any Device" paradigm. Stay tuned.
Posted by Laurent Philonenko at 03:24PM PST
Rob Feb 18, 2009
Seeing Mobile Communicator for the iPhone would be one of the best UC apps to develop for the iPhone. Is there any timeline for CUMC on the iPhone?