The office desk phone is officially on notice that it might be heading to a dusty equipment closet down in the basement. It’s not going to be an immediate transition for some organizations, but we are finally at a point where the economics and technologies meet to make the tablet a compelling replacement for the old school desk phone.
Are tablets going to replace the
corporate desk phone? Will you believes that the pieces are coming
together to make this a sensible option for many companies.
Here are the reasons why, for many of us, tablets will replace desk phones in the next few years.
BYOD (Bring Your Own Device)
The launch of the Apple iPad brought a
surge of consumer attention to the tablet. People love their iPads,
which in turn gave the Android tablet market a leg up for consumers
seeking other options. This led to the Bring Your Own Device (BYOD)
trend, with employees wanting to bring their personal devices into the
office to perform their work. Credit can go to the iPad and other
tablets for leading this charge.
Moreover, following this surge came
increased attention from the business sector wanting more business
applications for tablets, especially for communications and
collaboration.
Changing nature of work
Cloth cubicle walls and fluorescent
lighting no longer make the workspace, and corporations, even the U.S.
federal government are realizing cost savings and improved employee
morale through the growth of telework programs.
When a tablet replaces a desk phone,
the form factor makes it easy to take it along to a home office, client
site, hotel, or any other place with the employee’s telephone system and
other UC tools at the ready.
Consolidating devices when possible
is helpful for asset management and extending shrinking budgets to
support telework programs. Workers also have less to lug around when
they’re on the road.
Growth of Unified Communications (UC)
Unified Communications is now
affordable for small, medium, and large corporations alike, making a
corporate tablet into a communications hub for employees by combining a
VoiP soft phone, Instant Messaging (IM), presence, and video
conferencing into one device.
UC vendors like Microsoft, Avaya,
Cisco, CounterPath, Whaleback, and Fuzebox have released Apple and/or
Android tablet support for UC platforms. So, a tablet client requirement
for your company’s new UC system is not far-fetched, since the clients
are becoming a standard.
Even if companies don’t have the
staffing and infrastructure to host their own UC system, new cloud-based
options are cropping up all the time, adding further to the case that
it’s time to move from a traditional PBX setup to UC.
This all makes for an undeniable
option for large and small companies to move their voice, video, and
online communications to a UC platform and swap out desk phones for
tablets so their workers can be productive and in touch to customers
from any location, not just their desk back at the corporate office.
Growing 4G network availability
Major carriers are all moving towards
4G network coverage in their major markets, providing the data pipes
necessary to carry video conferencing and VoIP at business-quality
levels. This could be the ultimate cutting-the-tether even to home
offices and coffee shops, giving road warriors and teleworkers greater
flexibility on their work location.
Improved mobile device management & security tools
Extending a corporate network and
communications platform to a mobile device like a tablet isn’t without
security concerns. Travelers and other mobile workers can lose their
devices or have them stolen, thus opening up a potential attack vector.
More mobile device management tools
are coming available that enable corporate system administrators to
locate and even wipe the important data from corporate-owned or BYOD
tablets on their network. Even without a MDM application running on the
corporate network, there are options like Find My iPad, which includes a
remote lock and a remote wipe feature that works through the device’s
location services.
Advances in tablet hardware
Tablet hardware is advancing to
nearly the parity of notebook PCs and ultrabooks. Recent model Android
tablets, like the ASUS Transformer Prime, sport specifications like a
5-core processor, 1080p video, and 8 megapixel cameras. And now that the
new iPad is sporting an A5X chip, improved battery life, 4G LTE, and a 5
megapixel iSight camera that’s great for UC, it’s definitely a
contender to replace the desk phone.
There are even signs of convergence
between the desk phone and tablet with the impending launch of the ASUS
PadFone, which combines tablet, phone, and netbook into one device. It
launches in April with 16GB/32GB/64GB of memory and 1GB of RAM. A 4.3″
smartphone with a latest Snapdragon S4 1.5-Ghz dual-core processor is at
the heart of this beast. It also includes a 960 x 540 resolution
display with front- and rear-facing cameras. The PadFone station and the
phone turn into a 10.1″ tablet with a 1280×1000 display. It has the
potential to be a wonderfully portable and powerful option for
organizations wanting to do away with desk phones.
However, the hardware, networks, and
technology are now coming together to make the tablet a compelling
replacement for the traditional desk phone. With productivity benefits
for organizations of all sizes, it’s time to hang up the desk phone and
move your voice communications over to a tablet.
