Products have been available for more than a decade, but the adoption of unified messaging technology has been slow. That's starting to change, particularly as more employees spend more time working out of the office, either on the road or from home.

“What is driving the demand for unified messaging is the desire to give the customer a single interface to communicate with his or her customers or within the enterprise through one channel, which means email, fax and voice are one single platform accessible through Microsoft Outlook or Lotus Notes,” says Roger el-Tawil, Channel & Marketing Manager, Avaya.

Globally, the combination of frequent travel and interpersonal interaction that has become deeply rooted in the work processes of today’s enterprises, along with the need to collaborate among teams, is driving the quest for new communication solutions. “Unified messaging has been proven to improve employee productivity and facilitate workforce mobility by giving employees access to voice, fax and e-mail messages from any location, anytime,’ add Joe Mehawej, Middle East Marketing Manager, Nortel. For example, with unified messaging, users can receive an alert when a new voicemail message is left on a company extension, then access the message in WAV file format and play it on a handheld device.

In the past, it was tough to justify a unified messaging rollout based solely on the convenience of such features. But as corporate voicemail systems reach retirement age, companies have the rationale they need to consider unified messaging-enabled replacements. “Today, there is more conviction in the value of what converged communications has to offer such as accelerated RoI, TCO benefits, immediate positive impact on productivity and cost reduction,” says Anwer Kotob, Senior Systems Engineering Manager, Cisco Systems.

Cost justification

Many corporate voice mail systems are getting old, and vendors are announcing plans to cease development and stop providing support services for a lot of legacy gear, says Krithi Rao, a research analyst at Frost & Sullivan. First-generation voice mail systems from vendors such as Octel, Centigram and Digital Sound are dead or on their last legs.

As replacement becomes avoidable, IT buyers are considering unified messaging products from big telephony players including Avaya, Cisco, Nortel and Siemens, as well as smaller specialists such as Active Voice, Adomo, AVST and Unified Communications.

The proof is in the numbers. After anemic growth in 2003, the market for unified messaging products is starting to take off. Vendors reported an average 12% revenue growth in 2004 -- a big increase over the 4% reported in 2003 and a huge gain for a mature market, according to IDC. Last year the market grew an additional 9.9% to $362 million, and IDC expects it to increase by 9% this year.

One more indication of just how hot the market is getting is Microsoft's renewed focus on unified messaging. It plans to include a unified messaging component in Exchange 12, which is due out by early 2007.

“Businesses today know what they want and are even more aware of the importance of reliable communications infrastructure. Few years back, you would only hear big spenders talking about Unified Messaging or Unified Communications. Today, however, more demand is coming from various businesses of various sizes across the board,” says Kotob.

The right fit

For companies interested in unified messaging, an important factor to consider is architecture. Not all platforms work the same. Some store different message types in a single repository, and others provide a single access layer but use separate message stores for each message type.

Companies need to carefully evaluate the architecture that makes the most sense for their situation, Rao says. In some cases it may be desirable from a record-keeping perspective to keep related voicemail and e-mail messages stored together. In addition, having a single message repository to administer and manage may appeal to some companies.

On the flip side, some companies view a single message store for both voicemail and e-mail messages as a liability. "If their e-mail goes down, they don't want their voicemail going down at the same time," Rao says.

Integration, too, is no small matter. Unified messaging products often are tied to a number of existing enterprise systems. “Usually the integration is done at the email client level with options to either have the voicemail and fax applications integrated on the email server to have them running on a separate server. We have solutions, where a separate messaging server interacts with an existing TDM phone switch server, a TDM link and/or with an IP softswitch through an IP connection,” says Mehawej.

For companies that want an all-in-one package, there are unified messaging vendors that will bundle items such as a directory server, storage and security functions with the messaging features to create a standalone system.

Companies also should consider their long-term plans for IP telephony when choosing a unified messaging platform, experts say. IP isn't a prerequisite for unified messaging -- companies can deploy a unified messaging suite alongside a conventional TDM phone switch. But IP and SIP technologies are forcing companies to reconsider their entire infrastructure, Rao says. As they do so, it makes sense to consider voicemail replacements that offer unified messaging capabilities and can take advantage of interactivity among phone, e-mail and instant messaging applications.

“IP is not a pre-requisite to unified messaging, it is an enhancement. Messaging is a suite of productivity tools and up to a certain point you can stick with TDM. You could choose to implement selected features of unified communications applications such as having voicemail in Outlook or unified voicemail across the enterprise. However, when you want all you employees to have access to the same messaging capabilities regardless of location, for instance branch employees, you have to migrate to IP-based messaging,” says el-Tawil.

Lately vendors have been tweaking their unified messaging products to minimise disruptions during rollouts. For example, by incorporating commands that are familiar to users, such as "delete," "move" and "forward" for managing voicemail messages via an e-mail interface, vendors can lessen the end-user training requirement. "Users are able to use the same controls, same interface, same commands. Everything they do with e-mail they can now do with voice messages as well," Rao says.

That said, it's important to evaluate what level of access to give to each end user, Rao says. Not every employee needs all the features available in a unified messaging platform, and companies can save money by judiciously doling out access to employee segments.