A large percentage of users in the workplace employ their mobile phone as their primary telephone. This makes it easier to reach people who might be in a building or elsewhere on campus, but it can have some serious downsides, as well, including high cellular bills and poor QoS (or no service at all) in some parts of a building or campus.

To resolve these issues, Agito Networks offers its RoamAnywhere Mobility Router (Compare Access Router products). This appliance allows dual-mode (Wi-Fi and cellular) smartphones to use the building/campus wireless network when that network is available, or seamlessly switch to cellular when the corporate network becomes unavailable – handover time is less than 100 milliseconds. The system uses a small-footprint application installed on the smartphone – Nokia/Symbian and Windows Mobile smartphones are supported today, but RIM BlackBerry and Apple iPhone smartphones will be supported in the future.

The RoamAnywhere Mobility Router integrates with a variety of leading PBXs and extends desktop telephone functionality to users’ mobile phones. The system provides detailed reporting on smartphone usage across both the internal and cellular networks, and allows smartphones to be provisioned over the air. It also allows administrators to create a variety of granular policies for routing calls that include things like smartphone battery status, user presence information and the time of day the call is received. Another nice feature of the system is that policies can be created to turn off Wi-Fi functionality on smartphones when the user is out of range and operating over the cellular network, thereby extending battery life.

Last week, Agito and Cisco announced that the RoamAnywhere Mobility Router will integrate with the Cisco’s new Mobility Services Engine. This will bring additional network intelligence, presence information and other client information to the mix of capabilities for the Agito offering.

For users, Agito’s offering provides enhanced capabilities to receive calls on their mobile phone as though they were at their desk, extended battery life and other benefits. For employers who equip their employees with mobile devices, the primary benefits are lower costs and greater productivity from their employees, as well as significantly improved reporting on mobile device usage.

Michael Osterman is principal analyst of Osterman Research.