Gartner predicts: “By 2017, Half of Employers will Require Employees to Supply Their Own Device for Work Purposes”.
Further quoting Gartner:
“As enterprise bring your own device (#BYOD) programs continue to become more commonplace, 38 percent of companies expect to stop providing devices to workers by 2016, according to a global survey of CIOs by Gartner, Inc.’s Executive Programs
“#BYOD strategies are the most radical change to the economics and the culture of client computing in business in decades,” said David Willis, vice president and distinguished analyst at Gartner. “The benefits of #BYOD include creating new mobile workforce opportunities, increasing employee satisfaction, and reducing or avoiding costs.”
Gartner defines a #BYOD strategy as an alternative strategy that allows employees, business partners and other users to use a personally selected and purchased client device to execute enterprise applications and access data. It typically spans smartphones and tablets, but the strategy may also be used for PCs. It may or may not include a subsidy.
#BYOD drives innovation for CIOs and the business by increasing the number of mobile application users in the workforce. Rolling out applications throughout the workforce presents myriad new opportunities beyond traditional mobile email and communications. Applications such as time sheets, punch lists, site check-in/check-out, and employee self-service HR applications are just a few examples. Expanding access and driving innovation will ultimately be the legacy of the #BYOD phenomenon.” And: “The enterprise should subsidize only the service plan on a smartphone,” said Mr. Willis. “What happens if you buy a device for an employee and they leave the job a month later? How are you going to settle up? Better to keep it simple. The employee owns the device, and the company helps to cover usage costs. See full article here.
Our partners in Switzerland and Italy, are launching #solocloud, a cloud-based mobile telephony service for businesses. Mixing Solo technology with an operator’s own lines and cloud-based management tools, Solocloud is the first cloud-based mobile telephony service working worldwide. In addition to traditional Solo Mobile features (one number, cost reductions, FMC, ..), Solocloud has some specific features that make it the ideal service to any #BYOD strategy.
Solocloud for #BYOD
Once installed in the mobile phone (easy cloud-based process), Solocloud is just an app that you can use in your professional environment: call with Solocloud, display your one number and pay the special low solocloud fares. Usually, your company will pay your solocloud calls.
A private call to make? Just use your mobile as usual (and get charged on your private bill by your operator).
It’s as easy as that.
You don’t have to change carrier, you bring your own device at work and you manage your private/professional life!
Sosoftware will be present at the Lift Conference #lift13 this year again, represented by Claudia Benassi-Faltys, member of the board.
I (as I’m writing this) will be happy meeting you, and discussing any mobile related theme: mobile design (looking forward to the very promising session about mobile), mobile trends, mobile business, mobile issues in the company, and many many other themes!
As Lift is the center for highly innovative people and ideas, it’s the ideal place to exchange: just let’s connect at Lift!
My Solo One Number: 021 643 77 63.
My Twitter account for Lift:
This is the #lift13 poster received in advance and decorating my office:)
As you know, it’s been all the rage during the past year and beyond and still trending: we’re talking about cloud-based services.
Depending on the company’s strategy, which in turn can be adaptive, different choices can be made to deploy and access company’s needed services: the private cloud, hybrid cloud or public cloud.
Here at Sosoftware, as already previously mentioned, we worked hard to be able to offer all possible technologies aiming at covering most various requests and conditions asked on the market.
The technology for a full public cloud service is now ready and some partners are launching very innovative services on their markets (UK, Belgium, Italy, Switzerland, to name just a few).
We are eager to present shortly more in-depth details of the new offers on the market.
If you are interested by the cloud-based services, please drop us a line at info at sosoftware dot com, we’ll be happy to help you go mobile into the cloud!
On Dec. 14, all Sosoftware’s team, Swiss & Italian, gathered for the official launching of #solocloud.
After months of very hard work to reach a level of good usability, we can finally offer a full cloud service for SoloMobile for business.
We’ll present here further in details the complete features, but to sum up, with #solocloud you have:
- the one number service (you choose what number to display, wherever in the world)
- the number-identification (which is not the case in many countries for fixed-to-mobile solutions) for your mobile when calling at fixed-line rates
- international mobile costs reductions
- monthly fees (no more licence-based)
- no project any more: you sign up, configure and you call with Solo!
- no need to change mobile phones, IP telephone infrastructure, operator. Solo is like a professional layer on the existing environment
- cloud-based deployment and management: rules per user can be defined individually by the administrator
- additional mobile costs reductions: your company can choose to use lines from our partners (NEW!) for additional costs reductions. Depending on the amount of communications, the Solo service could even be FREE!
With #solocloud you have a very easy way to replace DECT’s, for example, offering additional benefits to traditional DECT’s.
#solocloud is ideal for people travelling a lot abroad, helping cut roaming costs.
Or it can be useful if you are an independent and need to communicate with another number than your mobile number. Example: medical professions, lawyers, etc.. In this way, the solo one number would act as a virtual number, giving you a professional service and image while using only your mobile.
#solocloud is the first cloud-based mobile telephony management service in the world!
Luciano Benassi, Sosoftware’s CEO, and Gianni Colombo, COO, both stressed how big was the interest of companies who had been presented the new service to.
The goal of this meeting was to celebrate this achievement. So the official speech was short.
We had also the presentation of the latest exciting administration features by Luigi, our head-developer.
Thereafter, it was time to relax and exchange around an excellent italian dinner.
Last Thursday the #mobicamp event took place in Bern, gathering Swiss CEOs, venture capitalists, angel investors, lawyers, academia, aspiring entrepreneurs and coaches around the “mobile” issues.
Sosoftware was present, too.
Apple derives most of its revenues from sales of iphones, iPads, Mac
And we loved the illustrations of @echtpraktisch, as captured and shared by Niall O’Gorman:
There was also a swiss startups competition (Dragon’s den) : more in this article by @AlpICT:
And the hashtag of the event on Twitter: #mobicamp, for some more information.
And some pictures on Instagram for the same hashtag #mobicamp >>
Solo is compatible with the new operating system iOs6 for iPhone
As soon as the new iOS 6 operating system for the iPhone has been released, that 100 million iOS devices have been updated to the new software, Apple announces !
Which means that we have to be reactive in order to guarantee the compatibility of Solo mobile with the new operating system.
Once again, our engineers’ team has given the most to provide a new release for Solo for iPhone, providing our iPhone users no stress, no service interruption!
It’s official: Solo is compatible for the iOs6 of the iPhone!
In a recent article, “How Mobile is Rapidly Evolving the World“, Forbes warns: “In order to stay competitive, your organization must learn to harness connected mobile computing devices to do things faster, more efficiently and within context.”
Underlying is the trend of the “distributed workforce” and Unified Communications: “With more and more available technology for collaboration and communication, companies are taking the “Best Person for the Job” approach. This means employees are being hired because they are the best candidate regardless of where they are located.” In 6 Technology Trends Transforming The Workplace Or, stated differently in the same Forbes’ article: “The future workplace is actually not a place. It’s just what you do. That means business will happen wherever, whenever and on whatever device it needs to happen – 24/7.” And, further: “new businesses will emerge “without walls” and be based entirely on mobile devices connected to the cloud. In that situation, the economics are unbeatable.
If that’s the case, companies will need to understand how mobile computing will potentially impact their competitive position in the market, and what they can do now to stay ahead of the curve.”
The next years will see mobile technologies disrupt traditional business at scale. IT managers and general managers know it’s a strategical challenge to anticipate and integrate mobile technologies in their processes, to identify what and how to transform in their business process and business model to stay more competitive.
In its “Digital IQ Survey“, PricewaterhouseCoopers stresses that “the most important
skill for the CIO is the ability to be an innovative thinker and apply IT to solve relevant industry and business issues.”
AS shown by PwC’s report, 66% of top performers are investing in mobile technologies for employees and 96% are planning to invest more or same amount in 2012:
In this perspective, it is obvious how strategical Solo can be for most companies, by allowing a cost-effective distributed workplace, alongside with advanced collaborative and management tools. Our customers know it and are already ahead of the curve!
But there are in addition a handful of companies asking for lighter investments and easier management. Yes: a cloud-hosted service. The demand has been steadily increasing (following another massive trend, see Gartner IT predictions for 2012) the past couple of months and we are happy to be able to offer from now on a first version of Solo as a Service!
NEW: Monthly fees, no more investment!
Life is getting easier for you! With Solo as a Service, you can now:
Activate the connection between your existing PBX and your mobiles in one click!
Remotely manage and control voice, data, sms/mms
Benefit from SoLo features with monthly fees. No more investment needed! You’re free as a bird!
