Emerging Vendors

July 08, 2009

Company: Agito Networks

Headquarters: Santa Clara, Calif.

Technology Sector: VoIP

Key Product: Agito RoamAnywhere Mobility Router

Year Founded: 2006

Number of Channel Partners: 37 worldwide

Ideal Channel Partner: Enterprise-focused solution providers

Why You Should Care: Agito Networks is consistently teaching old dogs new tricks. Whether it's taking VoIP, unified communications and presence mobile or offering seamless Wi-Fi/cellular handoffs, Agito is bent on making a dual-mode smartphone the only device customers need to do business.

The Lowdown: Kiss the desk phone goodbye. While you're at it, you can probably ditch your desktop IM client and anything else that keeps you tethered to the office. Agito Networks is trying to change the face of communications with its "go mobile or go home" attitude.

Agito RoamAnywhere 4000 Series

Agito makes the RoamAnywhere Mobility Router, an enterprise fixed-mobile convergence (eFMC) platform that lets companies deliver voice, unified communications and other communications tools to dual-mode smartphones and cell phones. The network appliance ties together WLANs, carrier cellular networks, VoIP and IP telephony as well as location technology to make voice and data mobile. What's more, Agito also offers seamless handoff capabilities, meaning if a user is talking on a smartphone using the in-building Wi-Fi network, the call will automatically kick over to the cellular network once the device slips out of Wi-Fi range, and vice versa.

And Agito has big plans for the channel, according to Pejman Roshan, the company's chief marketing officer.

"From a product standpoint, it lends itself to the channel focusing on mobility and focusing on unified communications," he said, adding that the RoamAnywhere Mobility Router is a "natural add on" to any mobility or unified communications deal. Same goes for Wi-Fi, it can add value by making those once fixed wireless applications mobile.

"As a startup, we're disciplined and standing by our word that we're going to be channel friendly," Roshan said. Currently, Agito has 37 channel partners globally, 30 of them in North America.

But Roshan expects that number to grow, especially since Agito in the last few weeks just unveiled for BlackBerry, meaning that Agito is now capable of delivering VoIP to BlackBerry smartphones, the most common enterprise mobile device.

"Partners saw the value of our technology, but two out of three of their customers are BlackBerry shops," Roshan said. "The partners we couldn't sign before are now ready because of the addition of BlackBerry [support]."

Perks for the channel include a simple-to-deploy technology and the ability for partners to offer Agito's mobility as a hosted service for additional revenue opportunities, Roshan said. Roshan said partners that are selling into VoIP and unified communications deployments can now go in with a mobility offering to add true value.

"Now, it's difficult to talk about unified communications without a good mobility story," he said.