Nokia today introduced a plan to significantly increase the options businesses have to optimize their voice services. Speaking at the annual Nokia Connection media event, Jaakko Olkkonen, Nokia's general manager for Enterprise Voice Solutions, described the strategy as a "fundamentally new way to marry the best of fixed and mobile telephony to provide cost savings and productivity to businesses and employees, new business opportunities for service providers, and simplicity and freedom for people in or out of the office."

Nokia will collaborate closely with established leaders in enterprise IP communications, as well as early innovators like OnRelay to help drive enterprise mobility and IP telephony. "Working together with existing leaders, we can extend the highly valuable services of the PBX to Nokia mobile devices as well as enable use of enterprises' private infrastructure for part of mobile voice traffic," said Olkkonen. "This greatly enhances the business case of IP Telephony for most enterprises and even enables leveraging investments in legacy technologies for increased benefit and reduced cost."

"Voice is the largest enterprise application when it comes to spending and numbers of users," Olkkonen told attendees. "One business number, one voice mail, intelligent call handling and assistant-answered lines are just a few examples of what will be possible in a converged fixed-mobile enterprise voice service."

With Cisco, the leader in IP Telephony and enterprise infrastructure, Nokia has agreed to extend the already established cooperation in CCX and provide broader joint solutions for enterprise mobility. Nokia will license Cisco technology to integrate dual-mode Nokia Series 60 devices to Cisco CallManager over WiFi. The solution will be available on coming dual-mode devices to be announced later.

"We are pleased that Nokia has chosen Cisco CallManager technology as the platform on which to develop its wireless IP phone client," said Barry O'Sullivan, vice president and general manager, Cisco Systems, IP Communications Business Unit. "The revolution in business communications has been driven by both mobile communications and IP Telephony, so it makes sense to bring the two together."

With OnRelay, a pioneer in mobile enterprise voice, Nokia has agreed to co-market OnRelay's MBX solution, which is commercially available for existing Nokia Series 60 devices, and to also make it available on future generations of Nokia enterprise devices. OnRelay's MBX is the first generic solution that provides cellular-only (GSM / 3G) extensions and rich voice services to leading IP and legacy PBX's, such as systems from Nortel, Cisco and Avaya.

As a leading systems integrator for converged IP communications, IBM Global Services is working with Nokia, Cisco, and OnRelay to meet the demands of customers who are increasingly asking for intelligent ways of combining mobility with IP voice. The Nokia enterprise mobile devices and solutions such as the Series 60 SCCP client and OnRelay's MBX, will clearly add value and be welcomed by customers looking for a well-integrated and robust solutions.

"Our target is to make the Nokia enterprise mobile device the de facto corporate mobile telephone by delivering robust, familiar and easy-to-use experience with the widest range of voice connectivity options while matching the various needs and existing infrastructure of companies," concluded Olkkonen.