Rating: Provision a corporate number on an existing SIM card
GoMobile News readers will already be familiar with the concept of Bring your Own Device (BYOD) where employees can utilise their own personal smart mobile devices in the workplace. Well, Movirtu has just introduced a whole new spin on BYOD which it has termed Bring Your Own Number (BYON). Known as Movirtu WorkLife *, It gets around some of the major drawbacks to introducing BYOD – such as billing and security issues. Best still, it is quite simple to implement because employees only have to install an iOS or Android app (BlackBerry might follow). They acquire an entirely separate ‘corporate’ number without even the need for a second SIM or SIM swap whilst retaining their existing personal number. Movirtu even claims that this solution is compatible with leading device management offerings such as AirWatch, MobileIron and mFormation.
Now, Movirtu has been around since 2008, so what’s happened?The answer is easy – Carsten Brinkschulte has now been appointed as the new CEO.
GoMobile News has known Cartsen since his days at Synchronica and he’s bringing his expertise in commercialisation of existing (and in this case patented) disruptive technologies to Movirtu.
Easily the most impressive aspect to the WorkLife BYON solution is the protection it offers for corporate data and intellectual property.
For example, imagine what happens when an employee leaves the organisation. He or she will no longer have access to the corporate customer directory.
The ex-employee won’t even have access to historical call logs – making it extremely difficult for him or her to ‘steal’ existing customers.
Better still, an existing corporate telephone number can be immediately be re-assigned to the person replacing the departed employee. So customers can continue to call the existing number.
As Cartsen would be the first to acknowledge, similar solutions have been around for some time. However, rival offering are VoIP based whereas Movirtu’s technology is based firmly on GSM.
Being GSM based has immediate advantages in that all standard GSM services such as text/SMS, MMS and especially voicemail are retained. So no duplicate ‘work’ voicemail systems.
On the flip side of the coin, an employee doesn’t lose the use of a personal mobile device and can continue to make personal phone calls without having to worry whether or not they should be assigned to a corporate expenses claim.
One huge advantage to the WorkLife app is that it is password protected so that if an employee loses the device, corporate data – such as customer numbers aren’t exposed.
Movirtu really didn’t want us to mention this, but WorkLife could also be a god-send for love cheats because a partner can’t access call logs or text messages as they are password protected.
Naturally, Movirtu will be showcasing this product these products and others such as ManyME and Share at MWC Barcelona.
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* UPDATE: Oh dear. It appears that Movirtu has totally confused GoMobile News. It is actually offering two separate products : - ManyME – originally launched two years ago in 2011 (see here) and WorkLife. Which means it actually has four apps – two for iOS and two for Android. We must leave it to you to work out which is which.
Nothing new at all. Several other vendors have this as well like PhoneYou and Ericsson (already for several years).