Unified Messaging: It’s All Just Email

from the November 1998 issue of Business Communications Review, pp. 37–40

All over the world, people love their messaging tools — whether voice mail, fax or email — but they love each one separately. Despite the many attempts over the past 10 years to combine the three into a single messaging behemoth, most end users just haven't been interested.

Then came the Web. Before the Web, when voice and email vendors pushed their visions of "integrated" or "unified" messaging, they hoped users would embrace a combined voice mail/fax/email system. Today, however, the typical Web browser can be configured to automatically launch the appropriate viewer/player "plug-in" or helper application the instant a certain file type is detected , eliminating the need need for system-level integration. Free plug-ins can be downloaded from websites and will install themselves, enabling users to view/play, for example, popular WAV- or JPEG-formatted files. If the attached file is of a new or uncommon type, the sender can bundle the viewer/player or it can be downloaded while the file is being opened. These developments are transforming Internet email into a kind of all-purpose vehicle. This change is fundamental—not because file attachments are new, but because it is possible to automatically process them.

Because universal messaging proponents have anointed TIFF and WAV as their favorite file formats, any Web browser with a TIFF viewer and a WAV player is effectively a universal messaging client. Making these few strategic format choices also enables us to send universal or integrated messages today, using Web browsers and Web-enabled email. All that's missing are the gateways that sit at the frontier of the Internet and the phone network, converting email into faxes or voice mail, or vice versa. The biggest hurdle is to make these conversions automatic and transparent.

Universal messaging stands the best chance in the marketplace if it tries to do nothing new. Forget integrated, unified or universal messaging — this is assimilated messaging. In other words, fax machines will continue to work on the phone network but also will accept messages that began their trip as TIFF email files, going through something like the TPC.INT gateway. Voice mailboxes will continue to answer the phone when users aren't available, but these shiny new digital answering machines will record WAV or TIFF files and attach them to email out the back end. The best universal messaging system will be one that nobody needs to know is there.

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A more detailed discussion of the issues raised here
can be found in the print edition of this article.