Beware The FMC Hype

Siemens has been on a marketing blitz touting its unified communications architecture, called Open Communications. Siemens has jumped into an increasingly competitive fixed-mobile convergence (FMC) market that includes Avaya, Cisco Systems, DiVitas Networks and Research in Motion. FMC has garnered a lot of attention lately in the industry, and the buzz will no doubt continue as more vendors enter the arena.

Lior Nir, director of product marketing for Mobility Solutions in Nokia's Enterprise Solutions group, said on a recent conference call that he finds himself having to downplay a lot of the hype centered around FMC. Implementing FMC isn't as easy as grabbing some Wi-Fi-enabled handsets (like Nokia's E61) and deploying an FMC appliance. You must ensure you have the proper Wi-Fi infrastructure with both the available capacity and ubiquitous coverage or your deployment will fail to meet expectations.

With a single vendor offering PBX, Wi-Fi and FMC products, Siemens customers could avoid some of the finger-pointing that can occur in multivendor implementations. --Sean Ginevan, [email protected]