Agito helps mobilise unified communications

Agito's RoamAnywhere fuses Wi-Fi, cellular and IP telephony with location and presence information

Networking firm Agito Networks has unveiled its RoamAnywhere Mobility Router, which aims to help integrate unified communications (UC) into organisations' mobile devices.

The new enterprise fixed-mobile convergence product aims to help fuse Wi-Fi, cellular and IP telephony with location and presence information to help users find and contact colleagues best suited to their requirements and in the most appropriate manner.

The system extends PBX and deskphone features to mobile phones, and uses Agito's 100ms call handover technology to minimise call costs. It promises automatic location and context-enhanced enterprise presence functionality for mobile users.

UC can often be a burden on power and bandwidth when implemented on mobile devices because they aggregate many different communication channels. Agito's application hopes to address these issues by reducing the amount of 'chatter' required by some of these channels, and by using various power saving techniques such as the intelligent managing of Wi-Fi usage.

Integration with Microsoft's Office Communications Server 2007 means that the system can be easily deployed and integrated with existing communication systems to provide a consistent interface for employees, regardless of whether they are deskbound or out and about. Development is underway to support presence servers from the likes of IBM Lotus and Cisco.

Agito said that a user can more easily determine the best way to contact someone by combining location and more detailed presence information. This can reduce mobile costs by intelligently using features such as Least Cost Routing, Automatic Reverse Dial, Dynamic Anchoring and Automatic SIM Swap.

Automatic Reverse Dial is able to reduce call rates in European and Asian countries by automatically initiating calls from the enterprise PBX instead of the cellular phone, while Dynamic Anchoring allows enterprises to capitalise on the free mobile-to-mobile calls provided by their carrier, as well as closed user groups and Wi-Fi call routing to reduce call charges.

Travellers who often swap out SIM cards in order to get local rates in the country they are visiting should benefit because the Automatic SIM Swap feature can detect this and automatically update the contact information on the server side, thereby ensuring that business users get cheaper rates while still being contactable.

"As presence technologies are gaining a toehold in enterprises' mix of UC solutions, Agito is the first to intelligently communicate users' full presence state based on mobile context and location," said Pejman Roshan, chief marketing officer at Agito.

"Callers now have intelligence into a user's presence before making a call, allowing them to select the best method of communication depending on how available a person may be."

Roshan gave the example of a colleague whose presence is marked as available, but who has a status indicating that he is working on an important presentation. In this case, someone trying to contact the person would know that he can be called or sent an instant message if the query is urgent, but that an email is preferable as he is busy on a high-priority task.

The new system supports GSM and CDMA devices, and currently has applications for most Symbian 60 and Windows Mobile phones. Agito is working on support for the BlackBerry and iPhone platforms.

The company has also further extended its native PBX support with the addition of the Alcatel-Lucent OmniPCX Enterprise and ShoreTel ShoreGear PBX platforms, as well as additional support for Nortel PBXs.

Agito RoamAnywhere will be available later this month through Agito and its channel partners. Prices start at around $9,995 (£6,700) for the 2000 Series and $27,495 (£18,500) for the 4000 Series.