All In One: Unified Messaging Merges Fax, E-Mail And Voice
Date: 10/12/99
Author: Doug Tsuruoka
With electronic mail on the computer, letters on the fax and voice mail on the phone, you may spend more time chasing messages than actually reading them.
But a new technology aims to simplify message mayhem. Unified messaging lets you get e-mail, voice mail and faxes in one place, whether it's over the phone, PC or other device.
As it is, some messaging software lets you listen to voice mail on your PC speakers or read faxes on-screen. But newer systems go beyond that. They convert faxes into audio messages and voice mail into text like e-mail.
The result? You can get all your messages on a cell phone or a laptop or desktop PC.
The beauty is you can get at all your messages through a single mailbox or messaging network via an Internet address or telephone number.
''I pick up a mobile phone and find I have three new voice messages, three e-mails and 10 faxes,'' said Joe Staples, senior marketing vice president for software maker AVT Corp. ''I can listen to the faxes like voice mail, or I can direct them to my hotel fax machine.''
Kirkland, Wash.-based AVT is one of many companies offering products for the unified- messaging market. Others include Lucent Technologies Inc. and Sandy, Utah-based CallWare Technologies Inc.
The market for unified messaging is growing. Researcher International Data Corp. predicts revenue will hit nearly $2 billion by 2003, up from $7.6 million this year. The number of unified-messaging mailboxes will soar to 25 million by 2003, from only 35,000 in 1998.
AVT's unified- messaging product consists of software that runs on any standard office server linked to the Net. The company's system also requires special voice and fax circuit boards be installed inside the server. The boards integrate the software with the office telephone system.
From there, employees can access their mailboxes from PCs in the office or from cell phones and laptops in the field. The product incorporates speech-to-text as well as text-to-speech technology for converting messages.
One catch is that AVT's product is aimed at companies of 25 people or more. It's probably not worth it for a home or smaller office. In a company of 25 people, Staples says, the average cost works out to $250 per user. The cost per user declines as more employees are added.
Lucent offers its Unified Messenger for accessing voice mail, faxes and e-mail in one mailbox. It works with Microsoft Exchange, Microsoft Corp.'s messaging system.
But Unified Messenger is limited to text-to-speech technology. It can't translate voice messages into text.
Pricing for the system works out to roughly $150 per user in a company of 100 users, says Lucent spokeswoman Tara Finney. Productivity gains allow clients to recoup the system's cost in about three to four months, she says.
CallWare Technologies has a unified-messaging product called Callegra that lets users listen to voice mail on PC speakers and read faxes on PC screens via a central mailbox.
Peterson says software for 100 employees costs about $5,700. Users also must buy circuit boards and a server that costs $3,000. But this works out to less than $100 per head, he says.
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