“Going to work” doesn’t mean what it once did. More often than not, work is where the employee happens to be, whether it’s a physical office, a hotel room or the desk at home. In the new workplace bring your own device (BYOD) movement is well established and accelerating. In fact, workers are increasingly relying on their smartphones and tablets as their communications platforms of preference not just for work for their personal needs as well.
A recent Alcatel-Lucent (News 
- Alert) app note, Raising the Bar for Teamwork Productivity with the Collaborative Conversation Experience, highlights the company’s OpenTouch™ suite for mid-sized and large enterprises is helping to bring the applications to the increasingly mobile workforce in to accommodate enterprise and individual requirements as the BYOD-centric workplace evolves.
The award-winning OpenTouch solution is capable of bringing multimedia, collaborative conversations to mobile devices and multiple parties. It provides a BYOD-ready networking environment that includes end-to-end security while supporting next generation all-IP multiple media business optimization solutions.
More to the point, as IT departments adopt to the new BYOD workplace they are becoming aware of the need to build and maintain their own app stores. OpenTouch gives IT more control of what is going over their networks as well as the opportunity to provide users with applications uniquely built to enable them be more efficient and effective and that strictly adhere to enterprise policies and rules. In fact, the flexibility of OpenTouch means that it can be customized for accommodating emerging BYOD requirements for business of any size and in any vertical.
It’s not just about handheld devices, however. The Alcatel-Lucent OpenTouch approach includes offering solutions that work at the desk, across enterprise facilities, on the road and at home. With this multi-tier approach, employees can carry out their business processes from anywhere they might be, with simple to use tools that increase communication abilities and teamwork opportunities. In short, it creates an always on/always accessible virtual workplace.
The advantage of the virtual workplace are demonstrable in terms enabling the leveraging of enhanced audio, web, videoconferencing, unified communications and various collaboration tools to improve workflows, decision-making and improve customer interactions.
The good news for IT departments is that the tools offered in OpenTouch don’t require extra servers to work. Again, illustrative of its flexibility, excellent videoconferencing or whiteboard services are at the ready. Plus, getting the message out to others is also easier with the Jive platform, which is part of the integration perk in OpenTouch. In fact, it is proving to be of great value to those with the responsibility of emergency communications on college campuses. In addition, retail banking organizations, and companies in the healthcare and other sectors with stringent compliance issues are benefitting from its recording capabilities and hospitality industry enterprises are attracted to its room automation functionality.
The increasingly BYOD business environment requires flexible IP communications like those offered in OpenTouch. The “quality of conversation” that is achievable both internally and with ecosystem members and customers increasingly can be the difference between an enterprise that is thriving and one that isn’t. OpenTouch, by making conversations of all types more immersive, i.e., more contextually relevant, can make the difference in and for your organization extending the benefits of BYOD to wherever work can and is being done.
Want to learn more about the latest in communications and technology? Then be sure to attend ITEXPO Miami 2013, Jan 29- Feb. 1 in Miami, Florida. Stay in touch with everything happening at ITEXP. Follow us on Twitter.
Edited by
Peter Bernstein
