But for many workers today, the office is nowhere and everywhere: in the car, at the airport, in a fast-food restaurant, at a high-tech convention, or, most often, at home.
New technology developed by MCK Communications works to extend the corporate telephone network to anywhere in the world. The Mobile Extender gives any wireless phone user access to the private branch exchange (PBX) in ways not possible before.
Some of the more primitive solutions people have used to stay in contact include voice-mail that tells callers where a person can be reached or a forwarding mechanism that transfers calls directly to the wireless phone number. Unified communications applications have begun to emerge recently that provide a "find-me, follow-me service," ringing certain end-points for a person at different times of the day, or all devices, all day.
And while products are already available to extend the PBX to remote access participants, none have been able to turn that user into a bona fide member of the corporate telephone system from anywhere in the wireless world. The new PBX extender line from MCK can make Bob the Rogue Traveler seem like he's in the office every day.
The mobile extender's main task is to extend the voice network to any location, says Al Brisard, vice president of marketing at MCK, which has been designing and implementing PBX extension facilities for more than 10 years.
"We can turn any analog phone, touch-tone phone, or cell phone into your digital extension into the PBX," Brisard says. "We turn every one of today's phones into an IP [Internet Protocol] phone." IP is the underlying technology that enables MCK to extend PBX functionality into the mobile market.
MCK manufactures a box that sits beside the PBX to packetise voice and send it over a dedicated IP backbone. A box on the end of the network closest to the user then depacketises the voice and sends it over the wireless network.
Competitors offering similar services include IP Axess, formerly Data Race, as well as large PBX vendors such as Nortel Networks and Lucent Technologies, but none of them have the wireless piece. In fact, Alcatel, Ericcson, Lucent and others resell MCK's Mobile Extender.
But it's not enough just to make the wireless device part of the system. MCK also includes software that allows the user to program PBX applications into the phone. This allows the wireless user to hit *8 to transfer a call or dial 9 to get an outside line. The software also makes it possible to transmit the display someone is used to seeing on their office phone to the display panel on their wireless phone.
