"The reincarnation of unified messaging" -- By David Kopf - November 15, 1998
americasnetwork.com
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"The reincarnation of unified messaging"
Its previous life may have been as a dog, but unified messaging is getting a new, solid lease, thanks to IP.
Remember unified messaging? That end-all, be-all messaging technology that was supposed to revolutionize the way end users managed their communications? Remember how service providers stood to gain an open-ended range of enhanced services through unified messaging?
Remember when unified messaging faded into obscurity a few years ago, along with groupware and other similar concepts?
Well, unified messaging is back, but this time the pitch is different. Where the unified messaging of yesteryear was expensive, proprietary, didn't scale well and was nightmarishly difficult to integrate into small, enterprise networks - let alone carrier networks - today's solutions may be unrecognizable in comparison to their predecessors.
With the Internet explosion, unified messaging technologies may now have a standard, interoperable environment in which to operate - Internet protocol (IP) - and users may finally "get it." When unified messaging first came on service providers' radar screens, the concept of visually managing messages was tough to pin down. However, now that users of all stripes have familiarized themselves with e-mail, the concept of messaging graphical user interfaces (GUIs) has moved from the esoteric to the prosaic. Moreover, now that users' e-mail boxes constantly overflow, the proposition of managing those messages from a telephone while traveling sounds tempting to many veteran road-warriors.
What's unified messaging, again?
"What the heck is unified messaging?" probably ranks as the most-common question asked of the technology, and it has merit. Unified messaging is not easily described, because it aims to address a cornucopia of messaging needs.
In the most basic terms, unified messaging provides end users with a single point of storage for messages of all types, - e-mail, voice mail, faxes - while letting users access their messages from a variety of interfaces. For example:
A mobile professional can call into an interactive voice response (IVR) system to not only listen and manage his voice mail, but also have e-mail headers (and, potentially, entire messages) read back to him using the system's text-to-speech (TTS) capability. •A corporate executive could sit down to a Web interface or open e-mail client, such as the Outlook Express from Microsoft Corp. (Redmond, Wash.) to visually manage not only e-mail messages, but fax mail and voice mail as well. If the mailbox is connected to the public Internet, the user could, in fact, access those messages from anywhere. •A professional on the road could be notified via pager of important e-mail and fax messages, which in turn could be forwarded to a fax machine at his remote location.
The value proposition of unified messaging is an easy one for service providers to figure out and pitch to their customers.
"The Internet is becoming a very powerful enabling transport mechanism," says Paul A. O'Brien, vice president of GTE's IP Telecom Business (Waltham, Mass.), which has been aggressively pursuing unified messaging services. "We also know that we spend more time than we'd like physically away from where we'd ultimately like to be. So, let's give our customers the ability to pass out one number that can be used for voice mail [and] fax mail, and we'll also give out a basic e-mail address."
GTE believes customers would value - and pay for - having Web access to such communications, and would like to be notified of important messages and have automatic message forwarding and alternative messaging interfaces, such as the phone, O'Brien says. Of the major carriers, GTE has made the most noise about unified messaging, and has gotten as far as market trials with a few hundred Tampa, Fla., users.
Trials are one thing; moving to service provisioning is a great leap, indeed.
Who wants it?
Despite its appealing service applications, the market for unified messaging is as tough to pin down as the technology.
There seems to be some carrier interest, but seemingly solid commitments like GTE's are few and far between. In a recent survey of messaging equipment purchases, most prospective buyers want to know if a system supports unified messaging but they don't necessarily want to buy the capability, says Paul Stockford, director and principal analyst for Cahners In-Stat (Scottsdale, Ariz.).
"So why ask for it and not buy it?" Stockford says. "The buyer wants it for the future."
Unified messaging systems haven't seen any spikes in sales. In 1997, 134,100 voice mail systems shipped in the U.S., according to Stockford, whereas bundles of unified messaging software sold numbered only 8,700.
However, the trend may be changing. In 1998, the price-per-port for voice messaging increased for the first time in several years. The cause may be, in part, attributed to unified messaging, according to Stockford.
"Really, that's the only thing I can think of," Stockford says. "When we track unified messaging, we can't track whether people are paying for it or whether they are installing it. We can only make assumptions. Perhaps people are paying for unified messaging software."
The concept of unified messaging still must be sold to the user. Whether or not users will buy into the unified messaging philosophy remains open to speculation.
"We all sort of have this impression that everyone in the country is a computer geek," Stockford says. "But fax, etc. are comfortable technologies that work."
Any potential user trepidation to adopt unified messaging can be attributed to habit, O'Brien says, but he feels old habits don't always die hard. Like automatic teller machines in the banking sector, unified messaging may have a tough first year, but once end users experience the benefits of the service first-hand, they'll convert.
Still, GTE is sticking with what users know best: voice mail and the Web. The two, O'Brien says, will smooth the initial adoption curve.
The best introductory markets for unified messaging appear to be the small business and the small office/home office (SOHO) arenas, as well as mobile professionals, Stockford says. "Once it becomes an accepted technology in the SOHO market, it will eventually spread to the enterprise," he says.
GTE's O'Brien agrees in most part, but sees the enterprise adopting the technology as well. "We think it is the SOHO market and up," that will adopt unified messaging first, he says. "Small enterprise companies are where we see this really taking off. This is because these are companies that have people on the move."
How do you market it?
How to sell unified messaging is a different story. Marketing questions range from "Is unified messaging a revenue center in itself?" to "Can it be incrementally upsold through modular service components?" and "Should we give it away?" Like the service, the marketing angles are open-ended.
Stockford believes unified messaging will initially take off as a public network application before the enterprise space, but how it is offered as a service is where many opinions split. Unified messaging will be key in local exchange carrier (LEC) differentiation strategies, he says. LECs might use cheap or free unified messaging to attract and keep customers, rather than market it explicitly as a revenue source. In any case, carriers could gain revenue through carrying advertising on their services in much the same way Web-based e-mail providers do.
"I think that enhanced services in the network will be an important, differentiating factor in the second assault of CLECs [competitive LECs] taking business from ILECs [incumbent LECs]," Stockford says. "The first assault is to get as many customers as they can. Next, they go after customers teetering on the edge and hit them with services like free unified messaging. ILECs will do the same to protect their market share."
Large CLECs that have implemented optical fiber in their networks and wish to start offering enhanced services are ready to offer unified messaging, but aren't sure how to market it, notes Richard Burton, vice president of sales and marketing for unified messaging system manufacturer Telinet Technologies LLC (Norcross, Ga.). The key is finding a service that makes users see the light.
"How do you hook a subscriber into your service?" Burton says. "You have the ability to drive such revenues even if you hook them with one feature and then upgrade them to more unified messaging features."
Knowing exactly when carriers will start marketing the service is purely speculative. "It could be 18 months, it could be 36," Stockford says. "I really don't think it's going to be adopted anytime soon, especially by service providers."
Yet, there are providers moving toward provisioning unified messaging services, and they aren't doing it in secret, either. Besides GTE's well-publicized trials and trade show demos, other providers are joining the fray. For example, AGIS, (Dearborn, Mich.) an Internet backbone provider, announced its intent on providing unified messaging services for business and carrier markets.
Moreover, GTE isn't stopping at end-user services. Why not wholesale unified messaging to other service providers?
"My strategy is to offer unified messaging, fax messaging, voice messaging and Internet call-waiting service to carriers of all classes," O'Brien says. "My strategy is real simple: I would like to be the network and IP cloud behind the customer-facing carrier, whether it is a CLEC or a mega carrier."
The key to provisioning success will be simplicity, says Jonathan Taylor, chief technology officer of MediaGate Inc. (San Jose, Calif.), a maker of unified messaging systems. Although a vendor, MediaGate offers services based on its iPost universal messaging software in an effort to help build the market. In that capacity, the company has found that new features mean new complications for users.
"The focus really needs to be on simplicity," Taylor says. "I think that is what it is really going to take to make unified messaging a mass-market service."
How do you integrate it?
One thing about unified messaging that won't be simple is how it will integrate into existing networks. A key problem with current unified messaging systems is that there are just about as many network architectures and deployments as there are vendors, observes Brian Strachman, research analyst for In-Stat. Also, without any clear market leaders in the vendor community and no standardized or proven methods for integrating unified messaging into carrier (and even enterprise) networks, network planners and managers are left worrying that they might accidentally commit to the wrong system, he says.
Yet, there are messaging standards to which vendors can write, and the proliferation of IP-based messaging standards helps carriers decide which horse to bet on.
The major difference between unified messaging systems from several years ago and those now on the market is, indeed, in the standards area, Taylor says. Incorporating standard, IP-based messaging protocols, such as multipurpose Internet mail extensions (MIME) which let users attach various multimedia files and other information to e-mails, helps unified messaging integrate into pre-existing messaging environments, he says. This is particularly important, as Taylor believes e-mail clients, rather than Web browsers, will be the devices that are used as unified messaging clients.
"Integration into existing e-mail infrastructure is the key," Taylor says. "The e-mail client is becoming the preferred way to access messages."
The advantage of the phone is that it's the thinnest client in the world - it's everywhere, but it lacks the control of visual message management. By the same token, Web interfaces are nice for mobile users, but they lack the speed and overall robustness of real messaging clients, such as e-mail software. Also, standalone client software can be used offline, which is very appealing to mobile professionals, Taylor adds.
Standardized methods for integrating unified messaging into the GTE network is so critical for the carrier that it is developing a handbook for vendors that clearly indicate its application programming interface (API) rules for writing applications to its network, O'Brien says.
Integration on the public switched telephone network (PSTN) side also will be critical to unified messaging's success, Taylor says. "However, unified messaging is not about the telephone," he notes, adding that unified messaging is an indication of how communications have changed under the influence of fax and e-mail.
Integration isn't the only technical hurdle, either. "The next question is, can we do it in a massive way?" O'Brien says. "Scalability has been the challenge since the beginning."
GTE is architecting its unified messaging services on a modular approach, hoping to plug-in newer and better technology when it becomes available, according to O'Brien. "We did that because we knew that there may be future scalability issues," he explains. "It's one of those things we learned to do as a telephone company."
Copyright 1998 Advanstar Communications. Please send any technical comments or questions to the America's Network webmaster.
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