Mobilising the Enterprise: Integrating Mobile Phones and PBXs

Andrew Silver, Chief Technology Officer of Tango Networks™, talks to Intercomms about the company’s fixed mobile convergence solution.

Andrew Silver, Chief Technology Officer of Tango Networks™ based in Richardson, Texas, is entering the FMC market with a solution designed to truly integrate mobile phones with corporate PBXs. Andrew is the founder of Tango Networks and has more than 14 years in the wireless industry, with companies such as Ericsson, Nortel, Spatial Wireless, and Comverse.

Q: Can you summarise your development work on the Tango Abrazo™?
A: While many companies are working in the broad space of fixed mobile convergence, the Tango approach is unique. We took a step back to view the perspectives of both the enterprise and the carrier, delivering a win-win solution for both. We believe enterprises simply want to enable their mobile phones to be connected to the PBX. That is what Tango has done, effectively taking the standard mobile phone and transforming it into a true PBX extension. To do this, we have developed a unique hybrid architecture, meeting wireless carrier needs for providing a strong enterprise offering within the carrier’s control, while the enterprise retains all of the information about the enterprise network.

Since our founding in September 2005, we have grown to nearly 50 employees, among them some of the top people in the industry. Our team has a wealth of telecommunications experience – in cellular, enterprise PBX, and VoIP systems. Our product, the Tango Abrazo, is currently in customer trials, and will be generally available in this first quarter of 2007.

Q: How does this system work and what is its primary benefit?
A: Our solution integrates existing mobile phones with the corporation’s IP, hybrid, or legacy PBX network, enabling corporations to ultimately change the way they purchase and manage mobile service. A typical corporation assigns an employee a desk phone, but struggles with policies when it comes to mobile phones. Most corporate policies let the employee purchase whatever phone they want, on whatever network they want and expense it.

Tango changes that paradigm through integration of the enterprise PBX network and the mobile phone. We enable the corporation to handle mobile service in the same way landline communications are handled. The mobile phone effectively becomes a desk phone in that the corporation can track, monitor, record and manage all mobile communications, and also decide how best to route the calls through the enterprise network for cost savings.

The Tango Abrazo provides the mobile worker with a single corporate phone number for both telephones, as well as all advanced enterprise features and services. This includes a single voice mailbox at the enterprise, conference calling, extension dialling, conferencing, call forwarding, and more. It supports the mobile phones no matter where they are being used, whether in the building or anywhere around the world.

The beauty of the Tango Abrazo solution is that we’ve abstracted the wireless carrier from the complexities of the enterprise network. Features such as voicemail and three-way calling are transferred to the enterprise, freeing the carrier from the costs of providing those services. In turn, we free the enterprise from having to understand the wireless network or change the way they manage their communications.

This solution also facilitates verification of compliance with regulatory mandates by enabling a corporation to manage, control, track and record all mobile worker phone calls.

Q: What other benefits are generated by expanding enterprise PBX functionality to mobile phones?
A: Cost reduction is certainly a major benefit. We see a typical 20% savings using this system, with a typical payback period of less than a year. That gets the attention of the CIO and CFO, but the Tango Abrazo provides benefits across the corporation. The employee gets a far more productive mobile phone, with all the features of a desk phone. All calls are automatically routed over the corporate network at the lowest cost – good news both for the CFO and the employee, who no longer has to worry about the costs of wireless calls.

Corporate control and management are huge benefits. Policy-based calling restrictions enable the enterprise to provide a mobile phone to an employee and tailor the service plan to that employee’s job function, eliminating the potential for abuse on company-provided phones. For instance, an employee’s mobile phone could be activated only when the employee badges into the office or logs onto the data network from their computer. The call monitoring, tracking, and recording functions help enforce these types of policies.

The Tango Abrazo ensures that the mobile phone number now belongs to the corporation and the employee needs only one phone number. If an employee leaves the company, that phone number, just like a typical desk phone, stays with the company, along with all the associated contacts and business.

The Tango solution is also compelling for carriers, increasing their gross margin in several ways. First, the customer life cycle is expanded from the usual two years into the seven-to-tenyear range, which is more typical for wired carrier relationships. Marketing and sales costs associated with churn are reduced and the carrier can avoid interconnect charges, since whenever possible, the Tango solution routes calls using VoIP.

We believe this is the only true convergence solution that addresses the needs of both the enterprise and carrier. Other solutions essentially cut the carrier out of the value equation or offer minimal integration with the enterprise.

Q: Are you having to do a significant amount of education with potential customers?
A: We find that this solution is very easy for corporations to understand. It is similar to the way they think about buying PBXs, making it more straightforward than alternative options that force them to buy new mobile phones for everyone with software that they have to manage and maintain. Not only do CIOs and CFOs see the benefits, but so do the employees – the ones who will ultimately drive the usage.

Q: What organisational factors need resolving for a company to take advantage of this solution?
A: There can be resistance at various levels in the corporation. Employees may resist, because of the fact that all their mobile calls can be monitored and tracked. The greatest resistance will come from employees who have used their corporate-paid mobile phones as personal devices. However, our solution doesn’t dictate how the enterprise manages this type of usage; it just provides the tools so they can decide how to do it. We find most employees embrace this once they see how little training is required and how the productivity tools benefit them. IT departments appreciate the Tango solution, as there is minimal provisioning and management required to turn a mobile phone into a PBX extension – unlike many WiFi and other solutions that require the IT department to essentially become a network operator.

Q: What sort of savings have you been able to document by companies that have tested the Tango Abrazo solution?
A: We find that we save a corporation an average of 20% over its current wireless expenditures. In an independently-run business case analysis, the payback period for one customer was as short as eight months. We typically predict a 12-month ROI, but in this case, this global enterprise was able to leverage our solution to cut international calling costs and also completely eliminate a portion of the desk phones.

Q: Would some of those savings be gained anyway through better management of the mobile phones?
A: Some companies’ moves to gain control of their mobile phone solutions by trimming costs and finetuning plans can be appropriate in certain situations – but it’s a moving target. This approach can never provide the savings and comprehensive benefits of the Tango Abrazo, such as the integration with the PBX network and placing mobile phones truly under the control of the corporation.

Q: How does Tango work with a client to develop the right solution for them?
A: Once a client understands the value proposition and sees the benefit, the next step is to set up a trial by remotely connecting our Tango Abrazo system to the corporation’s PBX. For the trial, a limited number of employees’ mobile phones are integrated with their PBX. At the end of the trial, when the corporation decides to purchase the solution, we install the product on-site, next to their existing PBX system. Employee training is minimal, just instructing them in how to invoke their desk phone services on their mobile phone. IT department training consists of provisioning, managing and maintaining the system.

Q: Are there issues of scalability as smaller firms seek to emulate larger organisations?
A: Not as far as we are concerned. The Tango Abrazo is a highly scalable system that can start very small and can grow to the meet the needs of the largest Fortune 100 companies worldwide.

	501 W President George Bush Hwy Suite 250 Richardson, TX 75080-1132 Main Tel +1 972 559 1513 Fax +1 972 559 1513 E-mail: info@tango-networks.com Website: www.tango-networks.com

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