It’s a beautiful thing when a technology really starts gathering momentum. The transition from “that’s a great idea!” to “how did we live without it?” is when the people behind the technology achieve the satisfaction of vindication.

The union of Sprint Mobile Integration and Cisco’s Unified Communications Manager, which was announced earlier this month, is indisputable evidence of the momentum that Fixed Mobile Convergence (FMC) is generating. By virtue of Cisco’s position in the enterprise market, this extends the potential of the Unified Communications Manager for improved productivity and cost savings it can deliver.

This particular solution leverages the Cisco Unified Communications Manager, Cisco Unified IP phones, and a border element to achieve integration with the Sprint IP/MPLS core network. As a result, the network intelligently routes all enterprise calls and enables on-net calling nationwide.

Making all calls within the enterprise on-net calls significantly reduces costs, while the seamless transfer of calls between mobile phones and desk phones enables users to be far more productive. With a single phone number and a single voice mailbox, users don’t need to juggle devices, phones, or messages.

For the enterprise, all calls to that single number, no matter where the call is taken, can be tracked and logged. Class of service specifications can be applied uniformly to all calls. The single phone number becomes a corporate asset, which isn’t lost when an employee leaves, as often happens when employees have used personal mobile phones with their separate numbers for business purposes.

The jump to an integrated wireless environment is a particularly easy move for organizations that already have Cisco Unified Communications Manager in place. Thanks to this latest cooperation between Sprint and Cisco, it’s just a matter of bringing the mobile phones under the FMC umbrella and then enjoying the advantages that result. Small wonder, then, that FMC is clearly gaining momentum.