Tag Archives: mobile

Cisco’s Mobile Connect is useful; worth the two license units

Recently I decided to explore Cisco Unified Communication Manager’s Mobile Connect feature. This used to be called Single Number Reach and is exactly what you would expect: one number rings multiple phones–your VoIP set and an off-system number. It is straightforward to set up; follow this helpful guide on the Cisco Learning Network.

The nice thing about Mobile Connect is that it isn’t simply a multi-ring scheme; rather, it’s effectively a shared line appearance with your cell phone or other remote number. Communications Manager maintains supervision of the line, even if you take the call on your remote line (mobile phone), which allows you to easily switch between the remote and the desk phone. I believe, though I have not tested it, that this configuration would also allow the Mobile Connect line to participate in a hunt group.

In CUCM 7.x, you can configure an on-hook screen Mobility softkey to enable or disable Mobile Connect. This way, it does not have to be an always-on feature.

Enabling a Mobile Connect number consumes two additional device license units (DLUs) if you are licensing devices a la carte. The functionality is very nice and probably worth the licensing cost for those who want to use it.

Mobile Communicator presentation

I attended an online seminar today on Cisco’s Unified Mobile Communicator, Cisco’s plan to put the “unified” communications environment (corporate directory, phone, voicemail, presence, conferencing, and e-mail) all on your data/application-enabled cell phone.

You can view the product information for Unified Mobile Communicator here.

Two things make this solution unattractive.

One, it’s tightly-coupled and Cisco-proprietary. It’s locked in with Cisco’s products–Unity unified messaging, Meeting Place, and of course Call Manager. What if I want to connect to another voicemail or e-mail server? And from what I can tell from the presentation, it’s not using standard protocols such as SIP or IMAP to communicate with home base.

Two, it requires a big pile of new hardware in the datacenter to make it work. This needs to be integrated into the individual component servers (Unified Communications Manager/CallManager, Unity, MeetingPlace).

The first thing will keep Penn State away from this mobile communications solution. Penn State does not use unified messaging (our Unity setup is voicemail-only) which removes both the VM and e-mail functionality. We don’t use Meeting Place. What’s left then besides having voice capabilities? Yes, your cell phone already does that. Forward your VoIP phone to your cell and be mobile.

Mobile users at PSU can put together a suite of tools for their data-enabled cell devices to send and receive e-mail (POP/IMAP), instant-message (various protocols), and search the corporate directory (LDAP) but are for now without a way to tightly integrate with the campus PBX or voicemail.