The Espoo, Finland-based handset and cellular network equipment vendor has been talking up FMC for some time, and had already unveiled a deal with Avaya in March around putting client software on its Series 60 handsets to talk to the enterprise telephony vendor’s hybrid (IP-enabled) and pure IP PBXes, enabling features such as four-digit dialing, call transfer, and multi-party conferencing.
The next phase, said Gerard Bruen, director of voice solutions within Nokia’s Enterprise Solutions business unit, will extend the convergence and see Nokia deliver a WLAN-enabled cellphone, with GSM and 802.11b and .11g radios, towards the end of this year, using a SIP client to talk over a wireless access point to an Avaya Contact Manager IP PBX (or hybrids).
Caroline Nguyen, director of Avaya’s mobility strategy worldwide, said the deal with Nokia is her company’s second in enterprise FMC. Two years ago with Motorola we announced the ability to move between fixed and mobile phones, starting a call on the mobile then picking it up on the desk phone, for instance, and that product’s currently in trials in North America, she said.
The relationship with Nokia, which involves joint R&D and well as marketing, is initially focused on the GSM world, though CDMA will be addressed later, said Bruen. For the time being, Avaya will be doing CDMA with Motorola and GSM with Nokia.
The deal with Cisco is very similar to the one with Avaya and again extends an existing relationship. One difference is that rather than the standards-based SIP, the cellphones will use Cisco’s proprietary Skinny protocol, or SCCP, to talk to its IP PBX, Call Manager, over an AP. The Skinny client software to enable this has been licensed to Nokia by Cisco.
As the result of the relationship with UK-based OnRelay Inc, Bruen said Nokia will create an offering called Mobile Deskphone whereby the London-based ISV’s Mobile Branch Xchange, MBX, technology will be integrated into Nokia’s FMC portfolio, enabling IP PBX functionality from Cisco, Avaya, or Nortel products to be extended to GSM/smart phones when off the corporate campus. That includes features such as voice recording, important in the financial services industry, and call forwarding, he said. That deal also involves IBM Global Services, which has recently announced a worldwide SI relationship with OnRelay.
On-campus calling over a corporate WLAN, which will be enabled by the phone being launched later this year, will extend around 40% of the functionality of an IP PBX to the cellphone, said Bruen. The functionality that won’t be enabled, he said, includes things like docking for PDAs, which are a requirement in certain verticals.
