Friday, May 4, 2007

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Vendors, Carriers Fight For Growing Enterprise FMC Voice Contracts

PR WEB  Parsippany, NJ May 4, 2007 A new InfoTrack for Enterprise Mobility (IEM) study found that although enterprise expenditure on Fixed-Mobile Convergence (FMC) was in its early stages during 2006, the trend toward adoption of such voice solutions will command a greater percentage of the overall wireless communications budget in 2007.

By 2010, the majority of the firms surveyed in the United States and Canada predict having a mobile workforce of between 26 percent and 50 percent. InfoTrack defines a "mobile worker" as an employee who is not tied to a single physical location (such as a desk) or who is required to regularly move about, spending 20 percent or more of his or her work week away from the primary workplace -- roaming in-building or on campus, or traveling locally, regionally, nationally or internationally.

Nearly half of the U.S. and Canadian organizations surveyed preferred enterprise-centric rather than carrier-centric FMC voice solutions, according to the “Fixed-Mobile Convergence In The Enterprise” report.
The split between those favoring carrier-centric and those favoring enterprise-centric FMC Voice solutions was much narrower internationally, with the enterprise-centric approach coming out slightly ahead. However, at least 22 percent of those surveyed had no preference for either approach, making it clear that a major part of the business community doesn’t hold preconceptions about which is the better way of handling FMC voice.

“The preference for enterprise-centric FMC voice solutions in the United States, Canada and globally gives vendors an early advantage in working with prospects to implement such schemes,” comments John Lilley, IEM program director. “At the same time, carriers already have established themselves as credible alternatives. This is particularly true in the international environment, where many mobile operators have launched FMC offerings, albeit mostly for the residential market.”

In the enterprise-centric FMC voice space, vendors need to move swiftly to strengthen their edges by influencing those prospects that have no opinion regarding the best way to proceed with FMC, and they need to differentiate their offerings from carrier alternatives. For carriers that provide FMC voice solutions, the key to success, beyond the multi-year mega-deals with multinationals, depends on their ability to bring some kind of profitable mass customization to their offerings that also will meet individual business requirements.

For more information on the report, please visit http://www.telecomweb.com/fmcreport/ or contact Robbert Ruigrok at rruigrok@telecomweb.com or at 011 44 207 692 5284. 

About TelecomWeb

TelecomWeb encompasses global market-intelligence InfoTrack reports; daily e-letter TelecomWeb news break; TelecomWeb wireless, TelecomWeb broadband and TelecomWeb policy content packages; tariff consultancy Tarifica; and the Web-based business-telephony-product database TelecomTactics. To learn more about TelecomWeb, please visit www.TelecomWeb.com.

About InfoTrack for Enterprise Mobility

The InfoTrack for Enterprise Mobility Program publishes a series of six annual reports on enterprise mobile and wireless communications. 2007 topics include: An update on Fixed-Mobile Convergence, Mobile Support Solutions and Preferred Partners, Mobile/Wireless Communications Security, and Integrating Location-Based Services into the Mobile Workplace.

Contacts:

John Lilley, program director, IEM and publisher, Tarifica, jlilley@telecomweb.com, 011 44 207 692 5287