Traditionally in business communication, the mobile network and the telephony network were treated as two entirely disparate systems, with different sets of features and functionalities. When smartphones became widespread a little over a decade ago, this ‘split’ view started to shift; but effectively, most organizations still provision business users for a separate UC client and a separate mobile connection.
“The way this was being solved historically was quite clunky – putting an overlay onto a smartphone that enabled the mobile user to use some of the desktop features while they were outside the office, but didn't truly converge the two environments,” notes Will Morey, CEO of Pragma.
When people were primarily working from offices, business calls made and received on mobile phones were a relatively small percentage of the overall number of calls, and so, they didn’t pose a significant concern in terms of regulation, IT, or privacy. Today, however, almost all work styles are mobile to an extent, making native mobile integration a true requirement.
“Frontline workers represent about 2/3 of the overall workforce globally, i.e., 2 billion employees who cannot be addressed by traditional Unified Communications,” Morey says.
“IT vendors and suppliers have been trying to build a solution that caters to those employees’ needs, but the industry currently still lacks a truly mobile-first UC solution that’s available to all.”
That’s where Anywhere for iPECS comes in. Pragma’s new solution, designed for the iPECS Cloud UCaaS platform by Ericsson-LG Enterprise and developed in collaboration with them, allows a native integration of the mobile phone into the UC platform.
How It Works
Simply put, Anywhere for iPECS fully converges the mobile proposition with the desktop proposition. Integrating iPECS Cloud into the mobile network enables mobile devices to become an extension of the Unified Communications platform.
"We now have a holistic UC proposition that can be delivered on a desktop handset, a PC app, an iPad, or a mobile phone. For me, that makes so much more sense when I think of how I’d like to support my team and business, and I think every small or large business owner would agree,” Morey says.
On the technical level, a simple eSIM is downloaded onto the phone, and that eSIM is tied into iPECS Cloud. This means that a mobile phone call will flow through the iPECS Cloud platform rather than going directly out on the mobile network. This way, calls made and received using the eSIM will receive all the benefits of the iPECS platform natively.
Two Main Use Cases
There are two primary types of use cases where native integration of the mobile phone into the UC platform is of the essence.
First are those of frontline workers. Be it salespeople, delivery service workers, or GPs, frontline workers often face situations where they’re required to use their mobile phones to get in touch with clients or patients, making it difficult to balance their need for privacy with the recipient's wish of knowing where the call is coming from.
