June 20, 2017
Happy birthday, iPhone!
Next week marks the 10th anniversary of Apple releasing the first iPhone.
Release day on June 29, 2007, dawned to people lined up outside Apple stores and AT&T stores across the country.
The iPhone was not the first smartphone. But it captured the public’s attention and imagination like nothing before it.
A decade later, it is hard to picture life without smartphones and the app revolution that has profoundly changed how we communicate, play games, stay current and get stuff done. The majority of households in the US today have only wireless phones, with no landlines, thanks in large part to the popularity of smartphones.
As it happened, we at Tango Networks launched our first enterprise mobility product a decade ago as well. It’s been an exciting decade of innovation as we help make managing mobility – including the iPhone – simpler for businesses of all types.
Bring Your Own Device & Mobile First
The consumer craze for smartphones that followed the iPhone launch sparked two critical trends: Bring Your Own Device (BYOD) and “mobile first” communications.
Back when the iPhone was launched, BYOD was most likely to refer to letting an employee use their own laptop or PC for work. Smartphones in your employees’ hands were most likely corporate-owned and -managed devices.
But the popularization of smartphones accelerated the “consumerization of IT.” It’s rare to find a company today where employees have not used their personal smartphones for some aspect of work.
At the same time, more and more companies have begun adopting mobile first communications policies, making mobile phones the primary tools for employee communications.
These changes have radically altered how our companies operate. They have created a truly mobile workforce.
Employee reach and responsiveness is much greater. Employees in BYOD programs can use the devices they know and love, so training and device selection is easier. You are more likely to work outside of traditional business hours and in remote locations, so flexibility is greater.
But there is a challenge to managing both BYOD and mobile first. Introducing a wide range of personal devices can create management and support headaches. You also need to ensure that business communications are consistently smooth and professional across all devices. And security and compliance rules are not optional just because communications are mobile.
In short, going mobile first and supporting BYOD can be complex.
Making it Simple
It happens that we at Tango Networks launched our first enterprise mobility solution within a few months of the launch of the first-generation iPhone.
No one knew at the time how much consumerization and these new smartphones would affect the workplace. But we had a vision to simplify how mobile phones could be integrated with and managed by corporate IT.
Today, we’re proud of the role our Mobile-X is playing in making enterprise mobility very simple.
The platform makes it easy to adopt BYOD or to go mobile first, or even to do both at the same time.
Mobile-X enables you to manage any mobile devices, include BYOD personal devices, as if they are extensions of your existing communications systems.
It enables you to simply and easily manage user identities, ensuring that business communications come from the corporate number and personal communications come from the personal number.
It even enables you to use your existing workforce optimization, customer engagement, contact center, and compliance systems with the mobile devices, including BYOD.
Enhanced iPhone User Experience
A few months ago, we launched enhanced capabilities on Mobile-X for supporting the newest iPhones on iOS10.
Your employees on iPhones can use business calling features with the native iPhone interface, requiring no special client or apps. This includes direct access to the corporate directory and rich Unified Communications features.
You can see Mobile-X in action in our new series of demo videos: http://www.tango-networks.com/resources/#video
We’re proud that companies around the world use our platform to manage truly mobilized communications for hundreds of thousands of employees.
Mobile-X from Tango Networks is a key enabling service for modern business communications, including Mobile Unified Communications, mobile workforce communications, and programs for remote working, work from home, telecommuting and business continuity. The service brings next-generation fixed mobile convergence technologies to communications for the distributed workforce.
With more than 50 patents and numerous industry awards on our solutions, we continue to develop innovative ways to simplify mobilized enterprise communications.
Contact us today for a personalized demonstration of how Mobile-X can truly mobilize your company.
