Subject:
Northern Telecom Invests In `Unified Messaging' Technology Concern
Date:
Mon, 11 Aug 1997 09:46:10 -0700 (PDT)
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News Alert from Dow Jones Online News via Quote.com
Topic: Northern Telecom Ltd
Quote.com News Item #3683208
Headline: Northern Telecom Invests In `Unified Messaging' Technology Concern
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NEW YORK -(Dow Jones)- Canadian telecommunications-equipment maker
Northern Telecom Ltd., which is 51.2%-owned by Canadian telecom giant
BCE Inc., Monday said it bought a minority stake in Telinet Technologies
L.L.C., a Norcross, Ga.-based developer of so-called unified messaging
systems.
NorTel's stake in the company and the purchase price weren't
disclosed. NorTel said it will license Telinet's unified messaging
products and integrate them into its own line of products.
NorTel, which is based in Brampton, Ontario, is the archrival of
Lucent Technologies Inc., the big telecom-equipment maker spun off from
AT&T Corp. last year.
Last month, Lucent said it agreed to buy Octel Communications Corp.,
the market leader in voice-mail systems, in a deal worth about $1.8
billion. Among other things, the planned marriage promises to accelerate
Lucent and Octel's efforts in unified messaging, one of corporate
America's biggest needs in the digital age.
A number of firms are trying to develop unified messaging, sometimes
called universal or integrated messaging, systems to let users choose
how they retrieve messages sent as e-mail, fax or voice mail. Over the
years, voice mail has become entrenched in most companies, but more
recently, with the explosion of the Internet, e-mail has been coming on
strong. Unified messaging systems would enable users to access e-mail,
fax, voice mail or pager messages through one source, either by computer
or telephone.
Unified messaging systems, manufacturers and analysts say, can make
it easier for desk-bound workers to keep up with the information
flooding them in ever-larger quantities while also giving mobile
employees greater flexibility to receive messages. They say it will
foster better communication between groups within companies, as well as
among corporations, their customers and their suppliers.
But for all the hype surrounding unified messaging, the manufacturers
must first overcome several challenges before the technology can evolve
into a system as pervasive as voice mail and e-mail have become
separately. For one thing, no unified-messaging system yet fully
provides the ultimate convenience of letting the sender dictate a voice
message that the receiver can retrieve as e-mail text.
Further, potential customers face a tough choice: install the new
technology piecemeal; write off their existing e-mail and voice-mail
systems and replace them with a wholly new one, or go the more
complicated route of linking their existing systems. And some analysts
question whether having voice mail, e-mail and fax messages dumped into
one big mailbox is all that desirable. Analysts expect the appeal of the
systems now available to be limited to so-called work-group applications
- that is, communication-intensive groups such as consultants and
product teams - until the turn of the century.
Copyright (c) 1997 Dow Jones & Company, Inc.
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