Agito Intros BlackBerry Wi-Fi VoIP

June 22, 2009

Agito for BlackBerry, bringing VoIP over WiFi and Unified Communications to users of the BlackBerry smartphone has been introduced.

Agito’s RoamAnywhere Mobility Router is a powerful mobile Unified Communications product, purpose built for enterprises to help them mobilize enterprise voice and UC applications to increase mobile worker productivity while reducing costs. With today’s news, Agito extends its lead of the industry’s broadest range of supported handsets, to more than three times as many devices as competitors support.

According to Gartner, RIM’s OS had the second highest market share based on smartphone sales to end users worldwide in 1Q09, a position that was maintained from 1Q08. RIM’s worldwide OS market share increased to almost 20% from Q108 to Q109.¹ Agito Networks, which has supported Symbian OS devices since the company launched and added Windows Mobile OS device support the following year, is distinguished as the only mobile UC vendor to extend VoIP, UC and PBX functionality to users of the popular BlackBerry smartphone over the WLAN, while also extending these capabilities across the cellular network.

Previously, BlackBerry users could access UC and PBX functionality – such as one enterprise number and voicemail, extension dialing, conferencing, directory query and more – only over the cellular network. Cellular-only UC and PBX integration is incomplete and proves problematic for BlackBerry users indoors, due to poor in-building cellular coverage and overuse of cellular minutes. Now, BlackBerry users can benefit from the coverage and cost-savings benefits delivered by Agito Networks’ enterprise mobility solution, which supports the broadest set of handsets, PBXs and WLANs, and delivers industry-leading WiFi/cellular network handover.

“Here at Orrick, our lawyers and staff utilize BlackBerry smartphones for communicating with each other and our clients, inside our practice offices and while on the go,” said Patrick Tisdale, CIO at Orrick, Herrington & Sutcliffe LLP. “We have been interested in FMC, but needed a solution which would support our BlackBerry users. We’re excited that Agito has filled this mobile industry need. The Mobility Router can be readily integrated with our enterprise IT infrastructure, providing us automatic cell-WiFi network selection to deliver in-building coverage for our voice and data applications. This solution can address our current challenge of poor in-building cellular coverage that results in lawyers missing calls, and enables their BlackBerry smartphones to serve as untethered office phones without an investment in wireless VoIP handsets – all improving services for our clients.”

Now, Agito Networks delivers the benefits of a complete enterprise mobility solution with more capabilities for BlackBerry users than competing solutions, which require multiple servers and PBX upgrades. Agito’s RoamAnywhere Mobility Router is the only solution to combine mid-call features for BlackBerry smartphones – such as hold, conferencing, transfer; a single enterprise number and voicemail; directory query; and call retrieve – with automatic sub-100 millisecond handover over both WiFi and cellular networks. Agito Networks also uniquely delivers full-featured cost savings for BlackBerry users – such as international direct dialing and roaming, least-cost routing, reverse dialing, automatic SIM swap, and dynamic calling rules.

Prior to this announcement, Agito already supported more than 40 mobile handsets globally, approximately three times as many devices as the closest competitor. With this new support announced today, Agito Networks’ addressable market is widened among North American enterprises, and nearly all vertical markets worldwide, due to the growing popularity of the BlackBerry smartphones. According to Gartner, Inc., RIM held a 55.5% market share of smartphone sales in North America in Q109, up from 45.1% market share of smartphone sales in North America in Q108.

“The industry has been asking mobile UC vendors to deliver support for BlackBerry smartphones for years, including vendors who have been in business and trying longer than Agito Networks,” said Pejman Roshan, Agito Networks Chief Marketing Officer. “Clearly we are pleased to meet these requirements, after significant investment and effort over these past two years. Agito has continued to distance itself from the competition due to its innovation and differentiated functionality, which has been widely recognized. We look forward to further penetrating this untapped market of BlackBerry users, and expanding our ability to meet the mobility needs of organizations worldwide.”

Agito Networks’ RoamAnywhere Mobility Router uniquely fuses WiFi, cellular and IP telephony with location information, improving the accessibility and responsiveness of mobile workers, while drastically reducing mobile costs. RoamAnywhere mobilizes voice and Unified Communications for enterprises of all sizes, extending PBX and deskphone features to mobile phones. In addition, RoamAnywhere provides industry-leading handover between WiFi and cellular networks to reduce mobile costs and improve in-building coverage. Purpose-built for the enterprise, RoamAnywhere uniquely offers high availability, redundancy, security, enterprise scalability, and the industry’s broadest mobile handset and IP-PBX support. It works with all cellular networks, and natively integrates with enterprises’ existing equipment, including WLAN infrastructure and directory stores.

Pricing for the RoamAnywhere solution remains unchanged – starting at approximately $9,995 for the 2000 Series and $27,495 for the 4000 Series. RIM BlackBerry support will be available early next month through leading channel partners worldwide.