The growth of the enterprise mobile messaging market in Australia is set to accelerate following the commercial release of a world-first integrated and encrypted group messaging application that enables businesses to extend messaging beyond traditional messaging workflows such as SMS password verifications, delivery alerts and internal communications.
The world’s largest mobile messaging technology provider to mobile network operators, Australian-based Soprano Design, says the local release is the beginning of a global commercial roll-out of its SOPRANO GAMMA (Global Advanced Mobile Messaging Application), which includes enhanced security and enhanced workflow management functionality would help grow the global market – estimated at $US50bn in 2014 – by attracting wider use in sectors like healthcare, government, legal and financial institutions that rely more heavily on security, auditing and complex workflows.
Soprano GAMMA – which has just been released by Telstra as part of its highly successful Telstra Integrated Messaging (TIM) solution for business – is a breakthrough technology for enterprise mobile messaging that has its interface designed to have a simple “SMS-like” feel to preserve the productivity and immediacy of SMS, while deploying a more sophisticated business messaging experience in a mission-critical and secure environment.
Features include:
- Three layers of security (encrypted channel and message content plus patent-pending key encryption), which help enterprises meet global standards for security.
- Workflow messages with a unique UI designed to enable mobile workers to progress escalations, decisions and confirmations with the touch of a button
- Real-time acknowledgement of sent, delivered and read messages;
- Team chat with the ability to send multimedia picture and audio clip messaging; and,
- Essential productivity features such as integration, automation and SMS escalation.
With security a high priority for business, the enterprise-grade solution has already been taken up by two Australian organisations through Telstra. SOPRANO GAMMA is also being utilised by a large European customer in the transportation industry as part of a direct deal with Soprano.
CEO of Soprano Horden Wiltshire said GAMMA will allow enterprise messaging to mirror the rapid spike of consumer mobile messaging as it enabled more innovative uses of the platform and with the added security encryption function opened it up for wider business uses.
“GAMMA’s array of new functionality is a game changer for how mobile messaging is used by business to increase productivity and enhance the way it communicates with its people and customers,” Mr. Wiltshire said.
“In addition to the functionality of traditional SMS-focused products, GAMMA offers advanced security features with exciting IP-based workflow messaging while uniquely preserving SMS escalation alerts for last-mile coverage.
“This opens up endless opportunities for interaction with customers and workflow management processes.”
Soprano is currently in discussions with other leading global carriers to offer the award-winning technology to its customers.
New Integrated Workflow Messaging
One of the features that will drive the growth of mobile messaging in enterprise is the ability for business to use integrated workflow messaging, allowing a user to send a message with inbuilt buttons for recipients to select an action and respond instantly, with responses being sent to the administrator or directly into software application programming interfaces.
“For example a medical professional would be able to order a prescription or specialist for a patient by simply tapping a button in a pre-configured SOPRANO GAMMA workflow message as opposed to leaving the patient alone in the waiting room or by phoning in,” Mr Wiltshire said.
“This will introduce new use cases into a messaging experience, and will help streamline the communications significantly by reduce common mistakes often attributed to typing on mobile keypads and reduce the likelihood of productivity loss from manual workflows.”
Opening up workflow messaging to new markets
Mr Wiltshire said the availability of encrypted messaging opened up mobile messaging to be used for classified or highly confidential information.
“There are certain communications when business either can’t or won’t use messaging due the nature of the conversation,” Mr Wiltshire said. “With GAMMA we have included enhanced encryption and secure key management, vanishing messages and remote wipe for added security on Android and iOS devices.
“We see immediate relevance for Australian hospitals, government organisations and financial institutions that require greater security and more visibility of their workforce communication.”
Mr Wiltshire said the enterprise messaging market was ripe for disruption, but it would not be led by the ‘free’ consumer based apps such as WhatsApp, as they didn’t meet the specific needs of the business market.
“These apps fall short of the necessary compliance, security, integration and performance capabilities required for most business use cases,” Mr Wiltshire said.
“The new security and workflow management features of GAMMA will energise enterprise and government customers to use mobile messaging to its full potential.”