Aging voice mail systems, increasing interest in IP telephony and a surge in the mobile workforce are driving companies to consider unified messaging - a technology that has fallen short of expectations for a long time.
Unified messaging products are designed to streamline the way users manage their phone, fax and e-mail messages. With unified messaging, users can open, sort and archive voice mail messages from their e-mail interfaces, for example, or listen to e-mail messages from telephones.
Products have been available for more than a decade, but adoption of unified messaging technology has been slow. That's starting to change, particularly as more employees spend more time working away from the office, either on the road or from home.
Companies are looking for tools to make the mobile population more productive, says Brad Herrington, product marketing manager at Interactive Intelligence. "There are a lot of things people can do with a BlackBerry or Pocket PC. They can get their e-mail and chat. But they still have to call in somewhere to retrieve their voice mails."
With unified messaging, a user can be alerted when a new voice mail message is left on a company extension, then access the message in WAV file format and play it on a handheld device, Herrington says.
In the past, it was tough to justify a unified messaging rollout based solely on the convenience of such features. But as corporate voice mail systems reach retirement age, companies have the rationale they need to consider unified messaging-enabled replacements.
Cost justification
Many corporate voice mail systems are getting old, and vendors are announcing plans to cease development and stop providing support 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 unavoidable, IT buyers are considering unified messaging products from major vendors such as Avaya, Cisco and Nortel, as well as smaller specialists such as Active Voice, Adomo, AVST and Interactive Intelligence.
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.
