Agito Networks Makes Mobility Market Play with RoamAnyWhere

Enterprise FMC vendor Agito Networks came out stealth mode today to announce their enterprise mobility product, the RoamAnyWhere Mobility Router. Unlike other e-FMC vendors which have used terms such as "gateway" or "appliance" to describe their offering, Agito -- made up in large part of ex-Cisco employees -- has chosen the term "router" to describe how their product facilitates enterprise mobility.

Agito's executive team has as a strong background Wi-Fi but little on the voice side, and even less on the wireless carrier. The result is a product that emphasizes the role of the enterprise WLAN in FMC and emphasizes mobile/mobile convergence in a way that only one other e-FMC player has done, DiVitas Networks. Rather than depend on the macro cellular network, spotty service can be replaced with enterprise telephony services delivered over the enterprise WLAN. Other benefits Agitor's e-FMC product offering include a single business number and voice mailbox.

Also arising out of this enterprise and Wi-Fi centric perspective is Agito's most distinguishing marketing pitch: location. WLAN vendor Aruba Networks has made hints about this in their own FMC solution, still in trials, but Agito's claims are much more extensive. Continuing the wider industry development of Wi-Fi based location-aware services, Agito can use the location of handset to provide customized call routing and control services. The policy engine built in the RoamAnyWhere Mobility Router can be configured to deliver calls to both work and home during the day, but if home after hours they are sent immediately to voicemail.

Agito has also worked hard to make their product as enterprise-grade as possible. This includes software deployment and network authentication. Rather than require the user to endure a long software download or tether the phone to perform a desktop install, the end-user only needs to enter a URL to download a small piece of client code. This application launches, asks the person to enter in their credentials, after which the stub downloads the remaining portion of the program and configures it correctly based on the administrator-assigned settings for that user. In similar fashion, Agito's product integrates into the enterprise's native directory store, rather than requiring the administrator to set up a separate username and password for users.In this launch Agito Networks is downplaying their PBX and supported dual-mode handsets (DMH) support, not playing the vendor-neutral card as heavily as some of their competitors. Agito did acknowledge that they have Nokia E60-series support, and it's no surprise to learn that they've been working with Cisco's PBX.

Agito Networks plays down the other communication mediums: presence, IM, and visual voicemail. According to executives, these aren't Agito's core areas of competence, so they will allow other vendors to fill in those niches, integrating them into their product as the market demands. This appears to be a bit short-sighted as it fails to address the unified communications category (UC). Some organizations have confused e-FMC and UC, but to no fault of their own. They're anticipating that vendors who are tackling voice convergence between wireline and wireless (cellular, Wi-Fi, or otherwise) area also going to provide them multiple modes of access to their other communication modes: e-mail, fax, and voicemail.

Although a relatively late entrant into the e-FMC space, the market is still extremely nascent and there remains sufficient time for even a newcomer to make some marks.