AT&T and Verizon are butting heads on a new battleground in the form of business phone services, each scrambling to establish a perfect enterprise solution using employees existing devices or company-wide roll outs.
As made popular by virtualization technologies, 'dual-persona' systems are being touted by companies such as VMware to offer business phone services to the office setting. Such technologies allow IT administrators roll out business-related software and apps to phones used by employees without getting in the way of everyday use of said phones.
As more and more people obtain smartphones that are capable of surpassing work done by lower-end desktop setups, enterprises may cut corners by implementing company-wide software using virtualization or apps that separate your phone's business and personal aspects. AT&T has just released their brand of business phone services with an app called Toggle, allowing employees to switch between work and play (and hopefully more of the former).
Personal mode allows one to call, text, play games, and anything else usually done on a smartphone during one's personal time. However, when the boss is behind your back, Toggle allows access to company email, apps, and calendars in a way previously reserved for company workstations or virtual private networking.
However, Toggle comes with a huge downside in the form of availability limited to select Android devices. While smartphone virtualization being developed by companies such as VMware, Open Kernel Labs, and Red Bend aims to streamline business phone services, Verizon looks to make the push beyond the Android market by offering its Private Applications Store for Business to all users regardless of make and carrier.
Where AT&T falls short of pleasing non-Android users, Verizon follows through allowing 'businesses [to] create app stores with just the devices their employees or partners need, tuned for the privileges and needs of specific departments and users. They can include both internally and externally developed apps, and IT administrators can pull apps from the store or make them inaccessible on a user's device when necessary,' according to Verizon's Business Solutions Group VP, Janet Schijn.
Both wireless giants tout different approaches to a problem in the enterprise realm as business evolves to meet the needs of employer and employee. Unlocked cell phones and cellphone plans taking advantage of virtualization can be the investment (as long as productivity remains unhindered by Solitaire) which your company can utilize for its business phone services.
