November 2001
 

Chart Your Course

BY KEVIN MAYER

Awash in a sea of messages, you might feel less inclined to chart a course through your workday than you might imagine. Rather, you might feel becalmed, lulled to near stupefaction. Then, canvas drooping, your craft adrift, you might eventually run aground. Completely immobilized. This, at least, is the picture that comes to my mind when I hear anybody suggest that the availability of e-mail, or messaging of any sort, empowers users or promotes productivity. Granted, I may overstate my case. I acknowledge that I now routinely accomplish tasks that would have been unthinkable without e-mail, fax, and voice  messaging. (This article, much of which is based on responses to my e-mailed information requests, represents one such task.) All the same, messaging has its problems, which, like many problems of technical origin, attract solutions that are themselves technical. In the case of messaging, the problem was the accumulation of messages of disparate types, among disparate repositories, accessed by meand of disparate interfaces. The problem was “messaging chaos.” The proposed solution was unified messaging.

UNIFIED MESSAGING
A couple of years ago, a unified messaging vendor, once known as Applied Voice Technologies, and now known as Captaris, released a return on investment report in which the time savings of unified messaging were quantified. The report had an old-fashioned time-and-motion feel about it. Office workers were timed, click by click, through their message access chores. Some workers tapped into disparate message repositories — for e-mail, fax, and voice messages — while others had the benefit of a unified inbox. Users experienced a 53 percent time-savings using unified messaging to check all of their messages, as opposed to the traditional means of checking voice messages over the telephone, fax messages at the fax machine, and e-mail messages at the desktop PC. In addition, mobile users experienced a time-savings gain of 70 percent as compared with the traditional means of checking messages. 

When I first read an account of the study, I was struck by its triumphant tone. I imagined that by reading between the lines I could discern a blunter message: “You wanted quantitative proof? Well, you’ve got it! Now the issue is settled. Now everyone simply must understand that any lingering doubts over unified messaging are unjustified.” 

Needless to say, skepticism was by no means banished. Unified messaging somehow evaded “killer app” status. Even worse, industry publications (this one included) presented articles that tried to explain unified messaging’s failure to win broad acceptance. 

All the while, the daily volume of messages increased. Consequently, the messages stored on various servers kept accumulating, much to the dismay of MIS personnel who were frequently at a loss as to how to perform adequate backups. And not only did MIS personnel grow uneasy, but individual workers, too. While secretly proud of their burgeoning message stores, as if the quantity of messages somehow defined personal or professional status, individual workers realized, however dimly, that an ever-larger portion of the day was devoted to merely reviewing incoming messages. Office workers suspected they could easily overlook important messages amid all trivial messages. Sometimes overlooked messages would rise to the surface, like so much flotsam and jetsam, long after the time to act upon them had passed. Quietly but appallingly, lost opportunities drifted by, like pieces of old shipwrecks.

All in all, the idea that a time-and-motion study could make a compelling argument for unified messaging was mistaken, although I imagine such a study would have more impact if it were combined with other studies that quantified the growing portion of the day devoted to the increasingly impossible job of message management. But even such an extended study would be limited. It would still fail to measure losses attributable to stupefaction, that is, the torpor induced by an excess of undifferentiated messages. 

Although the benefits of unified messaging are as hard to demonstrate as ever, advocates of unified messaging are anything but discouraged. Indeed, many advocates suggest that the term unified messaging has served its purpose, and that it is now time to move on, to recognize that unified messaging has evolved, and that it now deserves a new name: unified communications.

UNIFIED COMMUNICATIONS
As it turns out, there are innovations that distinguish unified communications from unified messaging. That is, unified messaging is often seen as a unified view into disparate message types, a common inbox for voice, fax, and e-mail messages. Unified communications, on the other hand, is often understood as encompassing additional functionality, such as support for mobile functionality and a range of access devices, find-me/follow-me functionality, notification capabilities, medium translation (through text-to-speech, for example), voice access to messages, and perhaps even integration with instant messaging and personal assistants. 

There was a time I would have ventured a simpler distinction between unified messaging and unified communications. That is, I would have suggested that unified messaging encompassed premises-based systems, and that unified communications encompassed provider-oriented systems. Not anymore. Unified communications is the preferred label for systems regardless of where they are deployed. In any event, many vendors offer platforms in both enterprise and hosted versions. But, in this article, we will focus on hosted solutions. Unified communications systems are so numerous that any attempt to list them all would exceed all space limitations, if not our readers’ patience. 

The advantages and disadvantages of hosted unified communications coincide with those typical of hosted solutions in general. It is important to note, however, that hosted solutions, as part of the unified communications trend, have shifted their emphasis from lowest-common-denominator consumer use, to high-end business use. The idea is to stop giving away unified communications, as an inducement to subscribe to access services, and to instead justify value-added enhanced services, available at a cost. Consequently, vendors and providers waste little breath touting the benefits of an all-purpose inbox; instead, they tirelessly explain the benefits of “anytime, anywhere, any device” connectivity. In this spirit, some vendors cite their PBX and database integration capabilities.

ANOTHER STEP BEYOND
Highly integrated systems promise sophisticated collaborative capabilities by combining unified communications with real-time multimedia conferencing, presence and availability management, and even knowledge management — providing live, multimedia access to employees with the required knowledge and skills. By delivering more informed communications capabilities (that is, communications that accounts for user and customer attributes, including messaging, forwarding, and notification preferences), integrated unified communications would edge against the rarified realms of customer relationship management, or CRM.

Actually, when integrated solutions extend to these reaches, you’ll find some advocates impatient with the term unified communications, even though it has but recently gained currency. For example, Davidson Consulting prefers Strategic Information Delivery (SID), which Davidson predicts will grow from a $50 million market today to $1.7 billion by 2006. Presumably relying on broader definitions, provider POPstar Global Communications projects 85 unified messaging users by 2005, 1.0 billion mobile data users by 2005, a $6.3 billion unified messaging market size by 2004, and a potential industry size of $1.0 trillion. 

In another report, Ovum forecasts worldwide unified messaging service revenues to reach $31 billion by 2007. Of the total revenue forecast, almost $13 billion is attributed to service subscription fees, with $16.5 billion coming from increased usage of other revenue-generating network services, and $1.6 billion from advertisers. In addition, Ovum predicts, there will be 218 million active users by 2007, up from 5.5 million in 2001.

To return to the notion of SID, Davidson indicates that SID systems take data from hosts or servers, typcially convert it to a common XMLformat, and then automatically funnel it through SID conversion engines to format the raw data to fit various destination devices, including desktop PCs, cell phones, PDAs, and faxes. Unified communications engines then simultaneously deliver the information, including alerts, surveys, and e-documents, in whichever communications mode each individual recipient prefers (voice, e-mail, SMS, fax, SAP, secure e-mail, PDF, HTML, XML, instant messaging, or streaming media).

Because SID systems automate information delivery from existing applications, vendors are in a postion to support a range of markets and business needs, including call centers, CRM, enterprise resource planning (ERP), e-business, sales force automation, content and news delivery, and wireless data services.

Davidson claims that the leading provider of SID systems is Dialogic Communications and its Reciprix subsidiary, in which Microsoft owns a minority stake. Second in systems is Telamon, which was recently acquired by wireless systems integrator, Vytek Wireless. Leading providers of SID, notes Davidson, include Centerpost (which has received funding from Motorola), Strategy.com (a subsidiary of Microstrategy), and Appriss, all of which are followed closely by EnvoyWorldwide and Par3 (which has received funding from Nokia).

DIRECTORY
APEX Voice Communications: The APEX Messaging System is a high-density unified messaging and voice mail solution for sending and retrieving messages anytime, anywhere, using practically any device — wireline/wireless phone, PC or PDA. Designed for TDM- and IP-based networks, APEX Messaging is a service-ready solution with a Web-based interface and unified message store. The embedded service creation environment allows for quick customization of the application and development of completely new services. APEX Messaging also offers one-number access/follow-me, call screening, business conferencing and in-session outcalling for unified communications requirements. APEX Messaging can also be integrated with APEX’s Billing and Prepaid solutions to provide revenue-generating services and can also include speech recognition and text-to-speech. APEX Voice Communications is a manufacturer of enhanced services and billing solutions. More than 5,000 users in 75 countries have deployed APEX solutions for intelligent call processing, wireless e-mail, prepaid calling, enhanced switching, and network IVR.

Avaya: Avaya views unified communication as a family of solutions that allow individuals to collaborate and communicate more effectively, and to move more quickly in a networked e-business infrastructure. Avaya’s unified communication strategy leverages the Internet, wireless networks, and converged networking to enable both users and their contacts to interact with each other and with applications and information through a unified access point from their device of choice.

Call Sciences: Call Sciences is an international corporation that develops and markets unified communications solutions designed to facilitate the delivery of enhanced personal communications services by corporate enterprises and service providers. It’s flagship product, Personal Assistant, provides a single-number service for managing voice, fax, and e-mail messages over one global network — regardless of the device — from any location. What’s more, Personal Assistant users can manage messages in real time, making it easier and more cost-effective for professionals to stay in touch with their most valuable contacts.

Centrinity: The company’s FirstClass Unified Communications provides a single network-based access point from which users can receive, manage, and access all of their information and messages (voice mail, e-mail, and fax) using any number and a variety of access devices (PC, Web user interface, phone, handheld, etc.) from anywhere, anytime — regardless of connection path (LAN, Internet, telephone) or operating system (Windows, Mac, UNIX, handheld). The platform features a single message store on a single server and is based on an open, standards-based architecture designed to scale to several millions of users. The latest version, called FirstClass 6 Business Edition, supports more than five times as many concurrent users per server than previous versions. In addition, the latest version of the platform, upon which its collaborative groupware and Unified Communications were built, offers several new enhancements and features to users including advanced customization abilities, a newly designed web user interface, and security upgrades. Centrinity offers its FirstClass Communications Platforms to service providers, enterprises and educational institutions through an ASP hosted or licensing model. The company has been successfully offering its solution to the North American market since last year, and has since have secured partnerships with three service providers — TELUS, Sprint Canada, and BellZinc — who now use the solution to provide enhanced services to their customers. 

Conexys: The company’s iComMand is a hosted unified communications platform that is distributed to end users through channel partners, value-added resellers, and affinity groups. The customers of Conexys’s partners tend to be individual users, small office/home office users, and small to medium enterprises. iComMand, with its customizable interface, enhances the capabilities of existing platform services by integrating them together. The iComMand suite includes POP3, web mail, voice mail, private fax, text-to-speech, and the recent launch of its short message service. The customizable interface of iComMand is what sets Conexys apart from other unified communication service providers. The iComMand graphical user interface delivers Web searching, document and message management, and a unique windowpane that allows for upselling or integration of other application services. Customized folders, calendar, storage, and synchronized address books make individuals ready for mobile access. 

Comverse: The company’s Multimedia Messaging Solution includes mobile Internet, voice solutions, and prepaid solutions designed to give customers the ability to deliver access to communication, content, commerce, and community. The solution’s unified messaging capability gives end users one-stop access to voice, fax, e-mail, SMS, and video from any phone, PC, or Web browser. Additional enhanced capabilities include e-mail-to-speech conversion and more. Comverse unified messaging integrates with existing Comverse voice mail systems offering media-independent, low-cost message retrieval and delivery without terminal or network constraints. The solution is also 3G compatible.

CommWorks: The company offers a unified messaging system that combines network convergence capability and a set of next-generation enhanced features. Called the 8250 Unified Messaging System, the company’s offering bridges circuit and packet networks, giving users the freedom to communicate the way they choose, utilizing the communications device they prefer. Users can access all their e-mail, voice mail, and fax messages from a single, unified mailbox regardless of the device or network they are using. The system offers media conversion, multi-media forwarding and reply, auto-attendant features, personal assistant features, message notification features (including SMS), and a variety of administrative tools and system interfaces.

CTI2: The company develops, manufactures, and markets W.W.Office, a unified communications platform designed to help service providers become a communications portal. W.W.Office integrates a suite of IP-based enhanced services applications, including unified messaging, instant messaging, presence management, and push/pull content delivery. W.W.Office integrates data and voice messaging services over Internet, PSTN, cellular, and cable networks. The platform supports a variety of client interfaces including wireless and landline phones, fax, Web browsers, PDAs, Java-based terminals, WAP and SMS devices, and televisions. The latest version, W.W.Office 3.0, includes new carrier-class tools to manage, administer, and provision enhanced services, as well as define, customize, and support multiple brands and classes of service. In addition, W.W. Office supports user interfaces in multiple languages and includes new localization features.

Glenayre Technologies: The company offers enhanced services platforms and unified communications solutions that allow wireless and fixed service providers to support next-generation messaging through traditional and IP telephony networks. Glenayre’s Solutions portfolio leverages JAVA-based open APIs, allowing service providers to offer unified communications services that integrate voice mail, fax, and e-mail messaging capabilities with features such as voice-activated services and find me/follow-me services to generate new revenue streams. With the Solutions portfolio, asserts Glenayre, service providers will be able to evolve their unified communications solutions from today’s 2G and 2.5G networks to tomorrow’s 3G services. 

iBasis/VoCore: iBasis provides a fully hosted messaging solution called VoCore on behalf of wireless and wireline carriers such as Sprint PCS and Vodafone NZ. More than one million active subscribers use VoCore, a messaging solution that includes phone-based access to e-mail, voice mail, and fax, as well as PIM (integrated personal scheduling and contact management) and personalized communications portal services. The service comprises technologies from Cisco Systems, EMC, Openwave Systems, and Hewlett-Packard. iBasis and Openwave Systems jointly market and sell VoCore as an ASP or outsourced messaging solution for service providers that is designed to enable faster time-to-market and to reduce up-front capital investment and technology risk. 

InfoActiv: The company’s MessageFinder Unified Communications Service (UCS), with its patent-pending architecture, is designed to allow service providers to enhance, rather than displace, current infrastructures. It is meant to let users retrieve and manage multimedia messages, anywhere, anytime, from any device without changing telephone numbers or e-mail addresses. Users can listen and reply to e-mail from any telephone. Also, users can listen and reply to voice mail from their Internet-connected PC. Even more capabilities are available from WAP-enabled wireless telephones. Finally, MessageFinder UCS broadens the definition of “messages,” allowing users to access other information such as stock quotes, bank balances, and answering machine messages.

Integra5 Communications: The company is working with both cable television operators and business partners to develop a range of communication and messaging applications for cable television, based on the company’s unique technology. Integra5’s unified messaging gateway, UniTV, combines television and voice to enable both new interactive-content services for operators and a “media-rich” communications experience for the user. One function of the gateway is to provide The Messaging Channel, allowing home television viewers to use e-mail, voice mail, faxes, chat, instant messaging, visual caller ID, and SMS phone-text messaging through their television without the constraints or inconvenience of a keyboard. 

Interactive Intelligence: A global developer of interaction management software designed for enterprises, contact centers and service providers, Interactive Intelligence offers its Interaction Center Platform, the basis for a unique suite of Windows 2000-based products, as a cost-effective and simple alternative to proprietary telecom solutions. The company’s newest unified communications software, called Communité, offers unified messaging, one number follow-me, call screening, presence management, and other productivity applications to organizations with up to hundreds of thousands of users. Interactive Intelligence sells its software through a global network of resellers, distributors, integrators and original equipment manufacturers.

iVB Network Solutions: iVB Network Solutions, a division of InterVoice-Brite, provides network service providers with speech-enabled, consumer-oriented network communications, and e-business applications as well as outsourcing services. Services and applications such as communications portals, content portals, messaging, unified messaging and unified communications, secure m-commerce, and prepaid and post-paid calling are marketed under the brand name Omvia. Omvia Unified Communication includes collaborative features such as calendar and address book sharing. Call screening, accepting calls, find me/follow me and easy set-up of conference calls are also a part of unified communications. Optional enhancements to unified communications include speech recognition and text-to-speech capabilities. In addition, iVB Network Solutions operates as the Omvia Application Service Provider (ASP), providing products and services to network service providers and enterprises.

Lucent Technologies: The company offers AnyPath, a unified communications product designed to deliver an intuitive method for unified messaging, giving the service provider the ability to present voice mail, e-mail, and faxes from a single mailbox. From the single mailbox, a subscriber may access voice-activated services such as dialing, messaging, and Web browsing. Subscribers also have access to other advanced services such as text to speech and text to fax, and notifications of services, such as SMS. The carrier grade AnyPath platform’s open architecture allows creation and deployment of new enhanced media types and applications. Because AnyPath provides full scalability on both the voice and data sides, it enables service providers to have an evolution path to unified messaging and unified communication.

MessageMachines: The company notes that Microsoft Corporation and AOL/Time Warner have announced support for a relatively new protocol that extends the capabilities of instant messaging, and that vendors are taking a signaling protocol known as SIP and adding instant messaging “leveraged extensions” to deliver what is known as “SIMPLE” support. SIP and SIMPLE will become mainstream technologies in the coming months. These developments are relevant to this discussion because unified communications solutions will include support for SIP and SIMPLE in devices. Just one example, in passing, of the demands facing unified communications systems.

MessageMachines, founded in 2000 by veterans of Lotus, Microsoft, and the MIT Media Lab, has developed a software platform that takes unified messaging into the wireless world. It integrates email, instant messaging, short text messages, and digital cellular to work on any device (PDA, cell, fax, pager, SIP and SIMPLE devices, etc.) and enables the user to easily decide how those messages are to be received — computer during office hours, cell phone while traveling, PDA on weekends, and so on. This new technology anticipates what users will demand from the wireless enterprise and just who will actually control the wireless workplace. 

Onset Technology: The company provides both a unified messaging and communications platform. As a UM platform, it converts messages into formats appropriate for different devices and messaging systems. (For example, it can convert a file attachment such as a spreadsheet into a format readable on a wireless e-mail device. Or it can convert an inbound fax into text, use a text-to-speech converter, and create a voice message.) As a UC platform, it bridges messaging systems. (For example, it can take a voice mail received on a corporate system, notify the recipient via a mobile carrier’s system, and let the recipient reply with a message that requests a callback of the message to the recipient’s mobile phone.) Onset Technology provides solutions that convert messages — including e-mail attachments, fax, and voice — into device-independent information that individuals and businesses can easily and immediately access and use. The company’s METAmessage for Wireless and ThruFax solutions are available as ASP service offerings for individuals and workgroups, as enterprise offerings for corporations, and as carrier offerings for telco, ASP, and ISP providers. 

POPstar Global Communications: POPstar develops Solaris-based carrier-grade unified communications server software platforms to support secure unified messaging and VoIP/FoIP communications. Using POPstar’s solutions, ISPs, telcos, and enterprises can offer end users anytime/anywhere voice, fax, and data communications through e-mail, Web, telephone, fax, and wireless clients. All services are trackable and billable. POPstar’s standards-based solutions support OSP, H-323, T.37/38, SSL, WAP, LDAP, and more. The software interfaces with the PSTN via analog and digital T1/E1/PRI lines and integrates into networks supporting widely used Cisco and Lucent platforms. Customers can also take advantage of POPstar’s Clearinghouse to earn a share of the long distance VoIP/FoIP revenue traffic that crosses networks.

Primal Technologies: Primal provides unified messaging capabilities with its product Primal Connect — a call control application for the Primal Service Node (PSN), a centralized service node that interconnects with the public telephone network and Internet simultaneously via an IP connection. Subscribers of Primal Connect are able to manage their voice mail by graphically seeing the number of new messages, download them to their PC in a WAV format and forward them with one simple “click” using their existing e-mail program. Primal Connect complements the subscriber’s office e-mail system. Its products and services are used by companies including Verizon, Lucent Technologies, Telus, Glenayre Technologies, KPMG, Observer Cellular, and Worldcom. 

TOPCALL: The company, which offers integrating internal messaging systems (such as voice, fax, and e-mail, with e-commerce initiatives, ERP, and CRM applications), focuses on developing unified messaging and communications platforms around mission-critical applications and user requirements. TOPCALL notes that since it offers access to a single message store from any device, its unified communication solutions are used by large enterprises around the globe, establishing a solid customer base that includes global companies in all major industries, such as aerospace, healthcare, finance, and manufacturing. TOPCALL also offers consulting services that leverage wireless, IVR, and CTI technologies.

Tornado Development: The company offers service providers a low-cost, enhanced services infrastructure from which to deploy and market a multitude of communication and content services. Tornado’s technology enables service providers to deploy a single, fully integrated messaging system that may include the following revenue-generating services, in any combination: e-mail, voice mail, fax, paging, video mail, VoIP, SMS, IM, UM, UC, and MMS. Tornado asserts that its single-message-store system outperforms multiple-message-store architectures in terms of processing speed and scalability, flexibility, reliability, interoperability, manageability, and security. The company specializes in flexible business models including Tornado-based hosting arrangements and software licensing agreements. Tornado allows service providers easy entry into the market and efficient migration from a hosting environment to complete ownership of a messaging system.

Unisys Corporation: As part of its full portfolio of Unisys e-@ction Communications Solutions, the Unisys Universal Messaging system replicates some of the infrastructure normally found in an external voice portal (including ASR and TTS). This infrastructure within the Unisys architecture is integrated with both the Unisys Voice Portal and the Unisys Universal Messaging system, and thus the resources of the infrastructure are efficiently utilized. More specifically, the Unisys Communications Application Platform (CAP) employs four architectural domains that are used by both Voice Portal and Universal Messaging applications. These include an application domain, network interface management domain, media processing domain, and telephony domain. The Unisys architecture allows each domain to scale independently, allowing for flexibility, and the ability for applications to share the same resource components. 

The Unisys Telco Applications Service Provider (ASP) program has transformed business processes by allowing for fast implementation, low capital investment and maintenance costs, guaranteed service levels and on-demand expertise. The Unisys Telco ASP concept combines the Unisys CAP with the ASP program and integrates: multimedia value-added solutions; mobile Internet solutions; unified messaging solutions; voice over IP and data solutions; 24x7 support and helpdesk; systems and network management; managed operations; and outsourcing. With Unisys’s worldwide presence as a total solutions provider, the company deploys global hardware, applications, system integration, consulting services, and outsourcing services to make sure its clients remain the leading telcos in their respective markets.

uReach: The uReach Enhanced Services Framework — which has been market tested for two years by more than 800,000 users — is the foundation for uReach’s turnkey solution to help service providers, including wireless, wireline, and broadband companies, deploy a variety of unified communications serivces. As part of the solution, uReach offers several deployment options, from outsourced to licensed, to meet the technology and market needs of service providers. Carriers will begin deploying uReach-powered unified communications services to subscribers this year. The turnkey solution, backed by 24x7 professional services support, includes customer care, billing, and OSS support.

Voice Mobility: Voice Mobility sells platforms to service providers who then sell to SMEs and individuals. The three main components of Voice Mobility’s enhanced messaging platform are: voice mail integration and replacement; real-time communications; and a unified message store. Voice Mobility markets its solutions directly to carriers and service providers, as well as through channel partners such as systems integrators and OEM channels. The company employs innovative pricing strategies (per mailbox, per port, and outright purchase options) and provides after-sales marketing support. 

[ Return To The November 2001 Table Of Contents ]