CONNECT bridges the fixed/mobile phone divide
For the longest time it was a case of never the twain shall meet. Businesses looking to combine the converged benefits and collaborative working features of an advanced, hard-wired office phone system with the flexibility and convenience of mobile phones had nowhere to turn.
At the same time they were acutely conscious of the cost and maintenance burdens of traditional fixed telephony infrastructure, yet were reluctant to compromise what remained a key channel of communication for staff, customers and partners.
Gamma has bridged the converged fixed/mobile divide with a new converged solution that aims to do for business telephony what the Swiss army did for the pocket knife. Among the first of its kind on the UK market, Gamma Connect lets businesses powerfully augment their fixed telephony estates, and creates a platform for future migration to an all-mobile environment.
How Gamma Connect bridges the converged fixed / mobile phone divide
The best of both worlds
According to Gamma’s Alan Mackie the service delivers the best of fixed and mobile worlds while eliminating the disadvantages. “Companies like their fixed office systems because they’re easy to manage and control, help meet regulatory and compliance legislation and offer essential features like hunt groups, call recording, IVR, a common inbound and outbound number, and a central phone directory. Mobiles on the other hand have existed largely outside the corporate sphere of influence: hard to regulate, difficult to control and each with its own number.”
With Connect, employees’ mobiles and fixed extensions share a single DDI number particular to that individual, or calls may be routed from the business’ published main number. Any outgoing calls will present the same published number regardless of from which device they are made. And critically, mobiles are brought under the corporate umbrella of security, conformance, reporting and scrutiny that is so important in a tightening regulatory climate.
Compelling service
Mackie believes many will find the service compelling. “Take the public sector – healthcare, social and council staff often use their mobiles for work but may not want to reveal their number. Equally the people they are contacting may not trust a mobile number or associate it with the person or organisation with whom they are dealing. Now field workers can be reached more easily and can present the head office number when calling a client, so there’s always someone to answer a return call later.
“For the private sector the ability to access hunt groups and teams, have a common voicemail platform, maintain audit trails and voice recordings and analyse how business is being done are important. Previously it was impossible to aggregate that kind of data across fixed and mobile domains.”
The wider benefits
Other important drivers for business are improved customer service and reduced costs. Contact with customers becomes easier, more consistent and less fragmented by the transition between fixed and mobile. Meanwhile telecoms costs are set to come down significantly as companies reduce their dependency on PBXs, ISDN lines and desk phones, and as mobile call costs continue to fall.
Mackie predicts a time soon when even in large businesses, mobiles will be the only phones workers need. “Fewer and fewer people will have a phone on their desk. The whole model has changed. The technology is improving and new functions like presence reporting and auto call routing mean it’s perfectly possible to replace fixed with mobile today.”
Gamma has worked closely with phone and mobile O/S providers to put everything on the single green call/answer button, while its MultiNet mobile bolt-on service ensures improved coverage for voice and data. And because much of the intelligence behind the system resides within the network any handset may be used, not just smartphones.
Gamma’s new service removes certain technical challenges that have so far dogged converged deployments and restricted business take-up: a lack of consistent data coverage and a lack of integration between apps on a phone and its native mobile functionality.
