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Principal Sponsors:
 | Unified Messaging |
2. Benefits to Subscribers
Unified messaging is a personal agent for the individual user. It can help send and receive messages, whether they are voice, e-mail, or fax. It also will notify the user whenever mail arrives. The concept of notification is becoming a large part of messaging. Some people want to be reached at all costs, anywhere, at any time. Whether they are at home or on vacation, they want to be notified of messages. Others are more protective about their privacy. They do not want to be reached when, for example, they are sleeping or having dinner. Unified messaging technology provides the power to reach people almost anywhere, at any time and the flexibility to allow people to control when they can be reached. This is based on a concept of "your time" communications, where subscribers can interface with messages how and when they want.
With unified messaging, subscribers reduce the number of places they must check for incoming voice, fax, and e-mail messages. From a single interface, they can check for all message types.
Technologies exist that enhance the integration of voice mail and e-mail, such as text-to-speech software that converts e-mail into spoken words. For example, at the airport a user could call in on a phone and hear e-mail messages, making it easy to reach important decisions without delay. Other enabling technologies, such as speech recognition, are becoming more reliable and cost-effective. For example, people who are behind the steering wheel a lot will find speech recognition a particularly convenient interface.
Technology also enables people to process and respond to their mail. It allows them to forward it to others and to use it for community messaging. The concept of community messaging began with the need for schoolteachers to reach parents. At first it involved the use of a phone tree to convey information. One person would call four parents, and then each of the four parents would call four more parents, and so on until everyone had been reached. This concept is a great technique for communication in the absence of better technology. However, the phone tree can break down. If one of the parents reaches an answering machine instead of a real person, the next four people will not receive the message. Community messaging involves a distribution list. With a distribution list, the message can be recorded in voice mail or e-mail and then be sent to a large number of people within a minute. On a distribution list where some of the subscribers do not have a voice mailbox, the way to reach them would be to place a call to their home. Community messaging helps people communicate better.
Easy-to-use user interfaces are essential to accessing the unified mailbox. Whether from the phone or from the Internet-enabled PC, the subscriber can navigate through the unified mailbox with ease and full control at all times (see Figure 1). Checking e-mail from the phone becomes intuitive, and likewise, hearing voice messages from the PC becomes second nature.
Unified messaging is a business tool as well. It can provide a twenty-four-hour storefront. People can use the phone to get information or to make transactions. They can purchase merchandise or trade stock without talking to a live person. With the emergence of new technology, especially the Internet, the twenty-four-hour storefront has flourished. More information can be accessed and more shopping can be done than ever before. Through the Internet, people can search for the merchandise that they need and find out more information about what they want to buy.
The phone and the personal computer have become transaction terminals. Newer technologies are emerging for the phone that will make it more than a device by which customers can listen and use the keys to order items. Canadian telephone companies have invested considerably to create services leveraging display phones using analog display services interface (ADSI) technology. This technology allows the phone to be switched from voice to data mode as needed during the connected session. This device has become a very useful transaction terminal. People can use it for banking transactions, brokerage transactions, and even to order a book or a pizza. On the other end of the network, a pizza restaurant, for example, would have a small database of users on a $1,000 PC. Customers call in and enter the data mode. Their calling number is recognized immediately as a previous customer, and they can order their pizza with choices presented to them on the phone's display. The caller's address and telephone number is then retrieved from the database. This application is an example of technology yielding business solutions. The concept of community messaging has also been extended to the business world. Information can be sent to a group of people and feedback can be received. For the ADSI phone, messaging is the killer application.
Part of unified messaging is consolidating different mailboxes in a way that allows people to retrieve their messages through a single point of access and to have all their communication needs met. In the future, the barrier between, for example, the voice mailboxes at work, the voice mailbox at home, and all e-mail boxes will be seamlessly unified.
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