VARs Hop On Wi-Fi And Cellular Convergence

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Solution providers smell opportunity in the air.

With more and more vendors laying groundwork to make the convergence of Wi-Fi and cellular technologies a reality, channel partners said they are getting ready for a communications shift that will drive WLAN, VoIP, applications and services sales.

The seamless hand-off of phone calls between WLANs in offices, homes and public hot spots and the cellular network, also called Fixed-Mobile Convergence (FMC), could be the Holy Grail that provides a strong business case for widespread enterprise wireless deployments, solution providers said.

"It's something that's going to be in high demand. It's going to go through the roof," said Paul Moncrief, regional sales manager at Berbee Information Networks, a Madison, Wis., solution provider acquired earlier this month by CDW.

Aruba Networks this week plans to unveil its road map for bringing FMC to enterprises, while Cisco Systems is prepping its channel to deliver complex multi-application solutions such as FMC with the launch this week of its Master Unified Communications specialization, its new top-level certification for VoIP partners. Cisco also late last month unveiled plans to acquire mobile software vendor Orative, a San Jose, Calif.-based startup whose software will enable Cisco IP communications customers to tie their cell phones into Cisco's VoIP platform.

Other vendors such as Meru Networks, Nortel Networks and Trapeze Networks also are bolstering their portfolios and preparing VARs to capitalize on the emerging FMC market.

The idea that users could replace separate desktop and cellular phones with a single mobile device that provides access to enterprise VoIP calling features and messaging applications is extremely attractive to a wide variety of customers, especially as an increasing amount of business is conducted via mobile phones, solution providers said.

Brent McLeod, director of sales at Adaptive Communications, an Aruba partner in Portsmouth, N.H., said he expects productivity gains from Wi-Fi/cellular convergence to drive sales.

"I'll be able to do four-digit dialing on my cell phone regardless of where I am, and I won't have to dial four different phone numbers to find someone," McLeod said.

In a recent survey by Chadwick Martin Bailey of 110 IT decision makers from companies with 1,000 or more employees, 28 percent of respondents said more than half of their organization's employees use mobile phones for business calls. Nine percent of respondents said more than half of their organization's employees use their mobile phones as their primary business phone.

The FMC paradigm also promises cost-savings for enterprise users who will be able to make some calls for free using VoIP over the corporate WLAN instead of eating up cell phone calling-plan minutes.

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