At Interop, Enterprise Sometimes Follows The LIttle Guys

While the big bucks in technology are dedicated to the development of enterprise solutions, occasionally it seems as though consumer-based apps can take the lead -- at least, as far as creativity is concerned.For example, one of the first services I encountered at the Interop show this morning were major communications services that provide single business phone numbers for employees to use with both their desk-based and mobile phones. The Blackberry Mobile Voice System and Sprint Wireless Integration both extend the services of a company's PBX-based phone service to their mobile phones -- so that not only do you only have one phone number to give to your clients / colleagues / contacts, but you only have one voicemail system to check. This doesn't only make things simpler for staff, but presumably for the billing department as well.

I thought it was a great idea -- in fact, I thought it was a great idea when I first heard about GrandCentral, a Web-based company which was founded in late 2005 and that's been offering the one-number-for-all-your-phones service (and was recently acquired by Google). GrandCentral, which is still in beta, has been making something of a stir lately (for example, it was recently covered by InformationWeek's Alexander Wolfe).

I mentioned GrandCentral to one of the Blackberry booth staffers, who admitted that he had GrandCentral for his personal phone -- but hastened to add (justifiably) that enterprises needed something a bit more suited to their needs.