Nokia predicts over a billion mobile phones by 2001. With so much
business conducted on Internet time, a transparent and unified
communication network is a necessity
Busy IT professionals tend to be the first to adopt new
communications technologies. From the telex, fax pager and mobile
phone to internet-inspired services such as voicemail, email and
IRC, the number of ways to make contact has mushroomed over the
last decade. But how to avoid information overload? With time and
location of work becoming more flexible, workers cannot depend on a
single fixed solution. Offering new tools to manage the different
methods of communicating may be the answer.
Unified messaging is not a new concept, but with advances in
communications infrastructure, the cost and complexity of
implementing a single contact number solution is dropping.Potential
unified messaging customers could be divided into desk bound user,
road warrior (mobile user) and the mass market consumer
.
Each has their own needs and the IT industry is catering for them
in innovative ways.Statistics from the European Union claim that
there will be 10 million teleworkers within Europe by the year
2000, earning 400 billion Euros. While Britain heads the European
telework League table, Finland, Norway and Sweden closely follow
it. These statistics are likely to grow as business becomes focused
on the online boom, forcing email to become the most effective way
of communication with the e-consumer.Even with the growth of
teleworking, the majority of business time will still be spent in a
fixed location. The primary requirement for these desk bound users,
keen to exploit unified messaging, is flexibility and reliability.
The loss or delay in responding to messages can cause missed sales
or affect the reputation of a company. Fixed assets, like company
PABX's, fax machines and mail systems, need to be integrated, not
replaced, while individual or departmental integration and billing
are also major concerns.A good example of an integrated solution
suitable for this type of user is David, a corporate information
server, which is Tobit software's flagship product. David is
advertised as the worker who never sleeps and essentially provides
the functions of an office assistant. It integrates different
message services like fax, email and voicemail into one single
product. The technology behind David is reasonably simple. A
Netware or NT server has a card that communicates with both a
server side application and desktop client via a number of ISDN or
analogue modems. Although not cheap, the system manipulates voice,
fax, email and SMS in numerous ways. Typically, David equipped
users can perform simple tasks such as desktop faxing and SMS
creation, as well as advanced functions like remote email reception
and forwarding via a mobile handset. The typical services like
group notification can now be handled in multiple mediums
simultaneously across small workgroups, off site workers or even
whole companies.David is not a cheap solution and it does require a
dedicated NT or NetWare server; unfortunately there is no support
for Unix. The new 6.0 version will add more functionality,
including synthesised speech converting faxes and mail to audio in
six European languages. Because the system uses a simple scripting
language, tailored solutions can be created for each customer.
David is impressive but is still location-centric and reliant on PC
server architecture, which has variable reliability. For some
companies, 99 per cent uptime is still not high enough.The road
warrior typically represents the sales or maintenance branch of a
company. Constantly meeting clients or pursuing leads, extended
trips away from the office may exclude him from the communications
loop. Until recently, the mobile phone has been the communicator of
choice, but as visual data in the form of email and faxes becomes
necessary, trying to balance functionality with portability is an
important requirement.The recently-launched Dolphin service offers
an alternative to cellular phones, especially for data intensive
organisations with a large base of distributed or mobile workers.
Dolphin's UK licensing of part of the TETRA digital radio network
means that a solution, which is part walkie-talkie, part mobile
phone and part message service is now becoming an attractive
proposition to many businesses.Touted as a replacement for the
PABX, the network offers free calls between other Dolphin handsets
leased from the company and PABX functions like conference calls,
virtual extensions and call transfer. When it comes to data, the
7.2K (28.8k-Q1 2000) stream is enough for simple document transfer
such as meeting schedules and job sheets. Dolphin is still a new
concept and as such the handsets are still quite chunky. The cost
of making calls outside of a Dolphin "Mobile PABX" are more
expensive than carriers like BT or Mercury.All the major mobile
networks are already responding to Dolphin's arrival into the
market as a business-only mobile network. Vodaphone is about to
announce the piloting of a General Packet Radio Service that will
offer data rates comparable to current 56K modems. In the
background, Vodaphone is also conducting research into HSCSD (High
Speed Circuit Switch Data) which could offer something like ISDN
packet data across mobile networks. Hutchinson Telecommunication's
popular Orange service has also been recently upgraded with
"Wildfire" digital assistant and web-like phone services. Both
companies are offering business reasons to stick with traditional
GSM based mobile networks. The road warrior space is still the most
highly lucrative and fast-paced arena for message unification. If
Nokia's estimates of a billion mobile phones being in circulation
by 2001 are correct, then any unified messaging system needs to
cater to the mobile user.The mass-market consumer space offers one
of the newest and probably most exciting products in the unified
messaging field, the strangely named YAC, or "You're Always
Connected". YAC is the brain child of chief executive officer Mike
Feerick. Although not a new concept, the inclusion of a web
interface, a zero cost start-up package and fixed rate costs
explain the popularity of this fledgling service, which was only
launched on 9th November 1999. The system allows a user to assign
different communication devices into a hierarchical tree under a
single 07092 number. If either a fax or voice call comes in and
survives the user selectable call-barring feature, it will try
various numbers until it locates the recipient. If the recipient is
busy or chooses not to take the call, the system will take a
message and forward this via WAV/MP3 (or JPG in the case of faxes)
to an email address. Services like Orchestrate's Personal Assistant
and General Magic's Portico have offered similar features in the
past but none have provided both this level of functionality at no
cost to the user. The take up of YAC has been phenomenal, with over
10,000 users in the first 16 days of service. However, the one
major criticism is the potentially high cost to the caller, with a
call diverted via YAC ranging from 10p up to 50p a minute. In a
recent interview with ITNETWORK.COM, YAC's Piers Mummery, VP of
business development, countered this criticism. He maintains that:
"Even though we are a Internet-based telecommunication provider,
YAC pricing is categorised as a mobile phone rate and as such we
are instructed to comply with [OFTEL] regulations to offer this at
J rate (mobile phone tariffs) for the time being. We are not happy
about this because we know that the consumer has been paying far
too much for telephony costs historically, which is why BT makes
£317 per minute net profit... they can get away with it."Although
YAC is based in the UK, its fixed rate charge is supported in most
major European countries and the US with plans for continued
expansion. Mummery believes that this interoperability, plus its
internet roots, is the key to success. "Earlier this year we
applied for full telecoms regulatory clearance in each European
country, which takes months to achieve, and we already have
clearance from many of the regulators. One of the great things
about a net-based organisation is its ability to move in the
market. We are the first mover in the space of combining
free personal numbers, call redirection and unified
messaging as a single solution."YAC is not alone in this space and
appropriating the model of Internet service provider Freeserve by
offering a free service is not enough unless that service is able
to provide levels of quality and innovation. Mummery goes on to
comment that: "As the predominant offering from YAC is inbound
communications management, the obvious direction is outbound.
However, we still have numerous areas of opportunity to fully
exploit our current offering, with many interesting developments in
telecoms, we shall be capitalising on this. Areas like WAP, VOIP
and intelligent call routing are in the arena for development from
YAC."Although still in its early stage, YAC is likely to be a
success, though there are currently some small glitches in the
service. For example, the unattended sending of faxes to YAC
numbers is still twitchy, while devices like answer phones and
pagers still cause routing problems. In YAC's defence, however,
these are generally inherent to all of single number solutions. The
next version of YAC is likely to offer unification of email under a
similar scheme with redirection and management of multiple mail
addresses to a significant gap in the market. YAC's rivals are not
standing idle. Call Science's new online manager service makes
integration of services independent of a fixed PC. By creating an
online message centre for voice, email and faxes, and requiring
only a browser and net access to functions, the possibilities for
thin client users are great indeed. Another rival, Cognitel's new
NovCom software, uses speech recognition to trigger specific
services and messages for someone dialling into the system. This
would typically be a personalised greeting or even diverting calls
to another number for certain groups of callers, like important
clients or senior colleagues. The consumer space is growing rapidly
and like the boom in ISPs, the model looks to offer high value but
unfortunately less distinction between services - only brands.One
of the goals of unified messaging is transparency. If you need to
contact someone, the future communication net will negotiate the
medium and provide a channel for information using whatever method
is most convenient, whether video, fax, voice, email, SMS or even
real time IRC. If you leave a message, the next generation of smart
unified messengers will convert said message into a form that my
local communication device can manipulate. Above all, this level of
connectivity needs to be simple to operate and flexible. With this
level of intelligence, the privacy of recipients and callers needs
to be adhered to. Junk mail may be a problem now, but if a billion
telephones ring with automated sales pitches accompanied by email
brochures, technology will not have solved anything. Does the
industry recognise this? John Angus, director of marketing for Call
Science commented recently that: "[VOIP] is a interesting question
for [unified messaging vendors] which we probably haven't given the
sort of thought it deserves. Different people have different
opinions as to when it will be upon us. It will definitely open up
different permutations of call instances and ways of accessing
messages. At the end of the day you have to think of what the end
user wants and we think that people are very keen to protect their
time. Call screening and email filters are important as we each
receive more information. We need to reach a balance between access
and control."Call Science's innovative self-service Online-Manager
is likely to be adopted by rivals but Angus points out that this is
not just a gimmick, saying: "The most important thing is the user
interface. Simple and logical will separate the sheep from the
goats in this industry."To date, unified messaging solutions have
still not been widely adopted. Whether the perception of high
running cost, complexity or even communications overload limits
potential appeal is unclear. What is obvious is that as Internet
and mobile phone usage grows, bridging the gap between audio/visual
and analogue/digital is of paramount importance. As systems like
the fax give way to more modern communication tools such as voice
mail, the support for legacy and niche communication methodologies
is an area that unified messaging is addressing. This can be gauged
by the fall in sales of fax machines following the pattern of telex
before them. Unification is part of the wider shift our technology
driven culture is making towards eradicating the twin barriers of
language and technological incompatibility providing a true global
communication network.
Will Garside