Cisco Takes the iOS Lead - In the Wrong Direction

Apple's Worldwide Developers Conference in June introduced the first piece of good news on the mobile UC front in 10 years. It was there that Apple announced the CallKit API that would finally allow VoIP apps, including mobile UC apps, to access the native dialer in the company's iPhone. Two UC&C companies, Cisco and Microsoft, were showcased, and I heralded the announcement with a blog titled, "Good Morning - You're Now a Year Behind Cisco in Mobile UC." Since then I've been wondering if this was the break that would finally allow UC&C vendors to develop a mobile UC&C capability users would actually embrace. It looks like we'll have to wait a little longer.

While Microsoft has been virtually silent on its plans to introduce a redesigned Skype for Business mobile app with CallKit enabled capabilities, Cisco has been hard at work on it. So coincident with this week's release of iOS 10, which is required for CallKit, Cisco released its CallKit enabled app in the iTunes store. This initiative was largely the result of the partnership between Apple and Cisco announced back in August 2015. The problem is that the app is for Spark, not for Jabber, which means it will not change a thing about mobile UC&C for the millions of Cisco Unified Communications Manager (CUCM) users.

Make no mistake about it, CallKit is a big thing. As I have written about for years, the only mobile UC capability users care about is simultaneous ring, a feature which takes a business call and delivers it to the phone users prefer, their mobile. Of course, all of the UC&C vendors produced mobile apps that would allow users to make outbound business calls from their mobiles and those calls would be hairpinned through the UC&C platform tying up two trunks for the duration of the call.

It wasn't so much the wasted resources that killed these mobile UC app, but rather the fact that they required a user to open a separate app (rather than just using the native dialer on the phone) to make a business call. The end result was that the user experience sucked, the capabilities did not outweigh the benefits, and business people used their beloved mobile phones just the way they were meant to be used. The only place we ever saw those mobile apps used was in product demos.

Even Jonathan Rosenberg, Cisco Fellow and VP/CTO for Cisco's Collaboration business conceded as much in his blog accompanying the announcement of the new Spark app:

"Most people just use the native dialer in their iPhones for business calling, despite the fact that Cisco -- and other providers of IP communications infrastructure -- have mobile apps available that connect to their infrastructure. These mobile apps in many ways offer a superior experience for business calling. ...Yet, despite all of these benefits, people still use the native dialer instead of VoIP apps. Why? Because the native phone app is universal -- allowing them to call and be called by anyone, not just work contacts."

Let's think this through. First there are millions of CUCM users who could potentially take advantage of a CallKit enabled version of Jabber while there's almost nobody using Spark. Sure, Spark is the "shiny new object", but basic Spark service doesn't even include PSTN access. The customers must purchase PSTN service from a third-party partner like Intelpeer or if they have an existing on-premises Cisco UC system they can link through that with Spark Hybrid Services.

Implementing the CallKit capability with Spark rather than Jabber says to me that Cisco is more interested in developing a product demo for Spark than they are in providing a form of mobile UC people would actually be interested in using. So now they'll have a product demo for Jabber with the old mobile app and an even better product demo for Spark - what they don't have a "product" people will be buying! Rather than Spark, they're all buying Slack and Atlassian's HipChat.

Mr. Rosenberg does confirm that there is a CallKit enabled version of Jabber in the works, but no date is attached to it. To its credit, Cisco typically does not preannounce products.

Even with all of that tom-foolery, Cisco still retains a significant advantage over the other UC&C suppliers who are still stuck on a mobile UC strategy that was crafted 10-years ago, never sold, and never will sell. At least Cisco is doing something to dig out of that hole, rather than continuing to flog a "dead horse" while hoping for a different outcome. Remember Einstein's definition of insanity? It is doing something over and over again and expecting a different result.

Mobility is the single most important development we have seen in IT in this century, and UC&C is a fatally flawed offering without it. Android has long allowed access to its native dialer, but Apple remains the dominant mobile platform among enterprise users. However, what we have seen in the mobile UC space is that smartphones are not a complement to the UC&C offerings, they are a competitor. Smartphones do UC with an integrated directory, click to call/video/email/text, provide a marvelously fluid user experience and on e that mobile users have shown us repeatedly that they prefer over what the UC&C vendors have been offering.

CallKit gives the UC&C vendors a way to build mobile apps for the most popular enterprise mobile platform that addresses the biggest challenge to user acceptance. Unfortunately Cisco is using it to make a better demo for a product that has gained little traction to date, but is still way out in front of its competition who seem to have given up on ever having a meaningful mobile capability. When Csico gets around to doing something for the millions of CUCM users, we'll know it's serious.