Digital Migration: From Business to Consumer, and Back with Charles Golvin

As business and consumer technologies converge, changes in their features and pricing can impact channel
partners who serve small and midsize businesses. For an expert perspective on the future of digital convergence,

ChannelPro’s William Kozel spoke with Charles Golvin, a principal analyst with Forrester Research Inc.

ChannelPro: What are the most important trends in digital convergence?
Golvin: Generally, technology trends continue to move from the business side to the consumer side. A current example is unified communications, where there is a blurring of the lines between voice calls, emails,
and instant messaging. This enables people to receive a voicemail that can be automatically translated into
text, or a text message translated to voice. For example, you can tell the system, “When I’m on the road, I
want all messages delivered to my mobile phone.” Or, “I want all my text messages to be read to me.”

Another enterprise-based trend is the ability to control how and when other people can reach you, using capabilities known as “presence” and “availability.” Presence means showing whether or not you are online, and availability is determining whether or not you may be disturbed. Users—enterprise or consumer—will set rules that dictate who can reach them, and when. For instance, you could set a rule that if your calendar indicates that you’re in a meeting, all calls must be routed to your office line unless they are from your family.

Things are now flowing in both directions, however. With regard to media consumption and communications, the Internet is so widespread among consumers that the cycle of innovation has somewhat reversed. There are now more applications for the consumer market that are migrating to the enterprise market. One example is instant messaging, which started with consumer users and is now, with different features, a core enterprise communications tool.