Samsung teams up with Genband to beef up the enterprise tablet

Samsung promised it was going to get more aggressive about targeting its tablets and smartphones at the enterprise, and today what is likely a key component of its Samsung for Enterprise, SAFE, strategy emerged. Samsung will be offering business customers a unified communications software suite developed by networking vendor Genband. Samsing will first offer the software on its Galaxy Tab slates, but eventually expand to other devices.

Since the SAFE program launched in 2011, Samsung has been gradually fortifying its most popular smartphones and tablets with corporate-grade security while attempting overcome the Android fragmentation problems that plague CIOs. The Genband partnership, however, shows that Samsung wants to do more than just retrofit its phones and tablets for business users. It wants offer services specifically tailored to corporate customers.

Unified communications is a pretty key area for Samsung to launch into enterprise services since it bridges the realm of the business network and the plethora of over-the-top communications apps in the consumer world. Samsung will be able to offer IM, VoIP, video conferencing and chat, and document and media sharing apps that work across an enterprise’s wireline and wireless networks.

“It take years for an enterprise to launch something that consumers are enjoying right now,” Genband CEO Charlie Vogt said in an interview on Monday. Samsung, however, can drastically speed up that process by pre-certifying the Genband UC suite in the SAFE program.

Genband’s UC platform, called Experius, is already battle tested in enterprise networks the world over. Vogt said the company has already issued 20 million licenses for the client software to corporate and carrier customers. Genband offers the platform as a cloud software-as-a-service or it sells the software and infrastructure directly to enterprises, system integrators and carriers.