The converged mobile communications market this week gained a new player with the launch of Agito Networks (News - Alert) and its RoamAnywhere Mobility Router. The company’s flagship solution is a mobile convergence platform that uses radio frequency (RF)-based, location-aware technology to make voice and data applications less expensive to deploy.

 

More specifically, Agito’s technology was designed to help enterprises take full advantage of WiFi as an alternative to cellular networks for mobility services within buildings. 

 

To learn more about the RoamAnywhere Mobility Router and how Agito is helping enterprises use their communications resources more effectively, TMCnet asked Pejman Roshan, the company’s co-founder and vice president of marketing, for some background.

 

 

PR: We define enterprise mobility as the capability for enterprises to conduct their business with an ever-growing mobile workforce. Agito is an enabler for enterprise mobility, providing a cost-effective solution to allow mobile users greater accessibility and responsiveness by best mobilizing voice and data applications on mobile devices.

 

 

PR: The market is growing by mainstream adoption of technologies such as IP telephony and SIP; enterprise-class, WiFi (News - Alert)-enabled cellular phones; and WiFi standards that enable enterprise-class voice to be delivered using wireless local area networks (WLANs).

 

Enterprises have paved the way for enterprise mobility with rapid adoption of WiFi, IP telephony and smartphones for the mobile workers. Research conducted by analysis firms and Agito shows this to be true. For example:

 

PR: While at Cisco’s Wireless Networking Business Unit, we observed the widespread deployment of WiFi, and the growing adoption of VoIP. The introduction of dual-mode phones in 2003/2004 ignited the idea that WiFi can be an alternative wireless network to the cellular network. 

 

But, we soon recognized that, unfortunately, dual-mode phones operated with a split personality—they were two very separate phones in one. We recognized that there was the need for a product that would help unite the functionality of these powerful devices, and help them look, feel, and operate like one device. Coming from Cisco, we recognized that this was a multi-network problem, and set out to build a company and product to solve it.

 

The company’s mission is to enable enterprises to become truly mobile enterprises, providing employees with access to the applications and resources they need to be the most productive, including employees who make up a mobile workforce.

 

 

PR: Agito is Latin for “mobility,” so it’s as perfect fit!

 

 

PR: Wireless coverage is by far the most pressing issue in North America today. With more workers relying on their mobile device as their primary phone, they need solid, reliable, cost-effective coverage in order to conduct business.

 

Challenges we’ve learned about through research and talking with our 50+ prospects include: 

 

PR: Agito Networks’ RoamAnywhere Mobility Router is addressing these challenges, and helping organizations realize productivity and cost savings benefits by ensuring that today’s mobile workforce has access to the voice and data applications they need, at any time. For businesses with a voice-ready wireless LAN, the Agito RoamAnywhere Mobility Router eliminates choppy and dropped calls due to lack of cellular coverage, providing users the responsiveness and accessibility they need. 

 

The Agito RoamAnywhere solution also provides mobile users with a single business phone number and voice mailbox, and key IP PBX features for their mobile phone (message forwarding, directory look ups, etc.), providing users with control to respond to calls, anytime, anywhere.

 

Agito Networks uniquely provides mobile voice service delivery with its location-aware technology which lets enterprises take full advantage of their WiFi deployments as an alternative to cellular networks for in-building mobility. This enables enterprises to reduce up to 60 percent of their cellular expenses, and avoid deploying costly, carrier-specific equipment to address poor cellular coverage. 

 

To ensure a seamless mobility experience for mobile workers, the RoamAnywhere Mobility Router provides fast, automatic routing between the enterprise WiFi networks and any carrier cellular network. Agito’s location-aware innovation also enables enterprises to create dynamic and adaptive mobile policies that apply automatically based on where the user is. 

 

PR: Agito Networks’ RoamAnywhere is an enterprise mobility solution delivered on a network appliance and mobile client for Nokia/Symbian (News - Alert) and Windows Mobile dual mode phones that enables organizations to mobilize their voice and data applications.  It is the first and only business mobile convergence solution using RF-based, location-aware technologies to better mobilize enterprise voice and data, while remaining agnostic to customers’ choices of mobile carriers and equipment vendors.

 

The solution consists of the Agito RoamAnywhere Mobility Router in the network and RoamAnywhere Client agents running on mobile phones. The Agito RoamAnywhere Mobility Router is delivered in a hardened, turn-key appliance for easy deployment in enterprise networks. It offers a simple, intuitive web management GUI, and is scalable to thousands of users. The Agito RoamAnywhere Client, which supports multiple mobile phone operating systems, has a small footprint that is installed over the air. RoamAnywhere’s hybrid architecture separates the voice control traffic from data traffic, reducing appliance load, response time, and overhead.

 

The Agito Networks RoamAnywhere Mobility Router addresses the needs of enterprises to mobilize and make accessible their critical voice and data applications. Agito Networks provides enterprises with cellular cost savings, IT control and visibility over mobile devices and usage, robust in-building wireless coverage, and productivity benefits yet unseen in a mobile convergence product.

 

 

PR: Customer response has been extremely positive, and customers recognize the unique differentiation in the product, and the value it can bring. The usage patterns chart below, for a large manufacturing customer, illustrates this point. This company identified about a third of its employees as mobile users. After analyzing its phone records and usage, the company determined that savings from choosing Agito Networks as a vendor will enable it to realize a 100 percent ROI on its RoamAnywhere Mobility Router in the first 13 months, with a $200,000 annual savings after that.

 

 

PR: A large healthcare provider in the Northeast we are working with told us that they receive a 6-inch thick bill from Sprint (News - Alert) each month for its mobile usage. It needs to audit these bills, both from an appropriate-usage standpoint and an accuracy-in-billing standpoint. It pays an audit company $250,000 a year to do these audits, and it sees that with Agito Networks it could save this annual spend and bring all the visibility, reporting and auditing in-house.

 

PR: Agito Networks is well funded, recently closing a $9 million investment round led by Battery Ventures. The company’s founding team all came from the Cisco Systems Wireless Networking Business Unit, and its executive leadership team has deep enterprise wireless and networking industry expertise. The company’s overall employee base has domain expertise in WiFi, cellular, mobile operating systems and telephony. They come from companies such as Cisco, Trapeze, Motorola (News - Alert), Palm, Spirent, Good Technology and Proxim.

 

Agito’s RoamAnywhere Mobility Router is the only solution to meet all of an enterprise’s mobile voice and convergence needs. For the first time, enterprises can easily mobilize voice for their workforce, and truly reap the improved productivity and cost savings benefits that WiFi provides for enterprise fixed mobile convergence (eFMC).   Now, enterprises can benefit from improved in-building coverage, cost savings on cellular expenses, mobile policy controls, and enhanced user productivity. 

 

RoamAnywhere uniquely incorporates RF-based, location-aware technologies for reliable, business-class voice mobility. Finally, the product is built to be enterprise- ready—scaling to thousands of users while delivering the performance, ease of deployment and management and policy management required in an enterprise-class product.