s. (You "read" voice mail by playing it over the phone or on a multimedia PC.) The same interface inevitably contains functions for responding to messages, too -- although outbound messaging is not an inbox function.
The universal inbox simplifies life by
defragmenting
the messaging environment. It's faster to check one inbox than multiple e-mail accounts, fax machines, and voice-mail systems. Training requirements also diminish since you learn only one interface. The universal inbox may also eliminate delays in message reception that are due to the user's not checking a particular source (such as an e-mail account where you seldom receive any mail) frequently enough. Furthermore, the universal inbox lets you organize
fax and voice-mail messages in the same way -- in fact, in the same folders -- that you organize your e-mail. Not only is there value in unifying multiple filing systems, but e-mail folders may offer a better filing system than those that come with voice-mail and fax-mail products. Also, the universal inbox could offer multimode retrieval. For instance, through text-to-speech conversion, it could "read" your e-mail over the phone, so you don't need to find a telephone wall jack for your modem.
The universal inbox can certainly simplify life -- but not for all users. And although vendors have been working on universal inboxes for years, the technology is still maturing, so products might lack features you want. Moreover, while the universal inbox provides a single front end for disparate message types, it may do little to integrate administration, directories, or data stores on the back end. In addition, you must consider what you need and anticipate needing. It's best to go for a single package that has
everything you are likely to need. You don't want to be in a position of patching together disparate systems, each providing a little of what you want, to get all the capabilities you need. Heck, that's what you're doing now. On the other hand, you don't want functionality that you won't use, either.
With the stampede to the Internet, browser vendors imagine using their products as universal inboxes. Today, however, browsers simply provide an interface to multiple functions, including, perhaps, e-mail and fax. Popular browsers, such as Netscape's and Microsoft's, do not provide a single inbox for all messages. In fact, standards are only now emerging to support a universal inbox.
Conceptually, the universal inbox is simply a client capable of receiving messages from multiple sources in multiple formats. Most commonly, the fundamental building block of the universal inbox is an e-mail/groupware client. To the e-mail/groupware client software, you add software that allows the client to receive fax
es from a fax server and voice mail from a voice-mail server.
Generally, companies want universal inbox functionality based on their current or anticipated strategic e-mail products. Shared-file e-mail systems, such as MS Mail, seldom have the message store performance or capabilities to support heavy voice-mail and fax-mail access. So the back end is usually a high-performance e-mail/groupware server, such as Lotus Notes, Microsoft Exchange, or Novell GroupWise. Here, the vendor of the fax server or voice-mail server often provides unified messaging.
Products from Lucent Technologies and Octel Communications (the former of which made a $1.8 billion bid for the latter in July) are among the popular examples of this approach. Octel Communications is primarily a voice-mail company. Octel's Unified Messenger, which adds voice mail to Microsoft Exchange Server, runs on a new NT-based Octel voice-mail server. Fax will be part of the next version of Unified Messenger. Octel has announced that Unified M
essenger will support Lotus Notes, probably around mid-1998.
Similarly, Lucent Technologies, formerly the communications systems and technology unit of AT&T, is (not surprisingly) primarily a telephony company. Lucent's Intuity is a voice-mail system that uses Lotus Notes to create a unified messaging solution. Intuity provides both voice mail and fax. Plus, Intuity's Multimedia Messaging Server (MMS) has its own e-mail. Later this year, Intuity will add support for Microsoft Exchange and Internet mail products such as Eudora. Through Internet mail, Intuity will also support Lotus cc:Mail. Support for GroupWise is still an unknown, although the Internet mail support might do the job.
Lucent and Octel are now both focusing increasingly on computer telephony integration (CTI). Voice mail is part of such CTI solutions, but by no means the primary focus. Fax and e-mail are still further removed. CTI vendors offering unified messaging solutions include Applied Voice Technology (AVT), Tobit Software
, and CallWare Technologies. AVT's Call-XPressNT stands out with its features that facilitate picking up e-mail and faxes over the phone. Tobit's David is the operating system of a multifunction messaging server and runs as a NetWare loadable module (NLM) under NetWare 3.11 and later. It manages and controls databases that can contain different object types (e.g., e-mail, fax, voice, files, and links). This information can be accessed in various ways, including via LAN, phone, fax, or Web.
CallWare, from CallWare Technologies, is a CTI product designed specifically for the NetWare environment. For instance, it is an NLM and integrates tightly with Novell Directory Service (NDS).
Octel and Lucent provide both voice-mail and fax services. By bolting these products to an e-mail system, you get the three major functions of unified messaging: e-mail, voice mail, and fax. AVT provides voice mail and fax as separate products. CallWare, on the other hand, does not provide fax services. Thus, users must in
tegrate a separate fax server, such as ZetaFax from Equisys or FaxServe from the Cheyenne division of Computer Associates, to use fax with CallWare.
Although the trend is toward offering universal inbox functionality based on existing e-mail/groupware clients, there are also e-mail clients that specifically aim at universal inbox functionality. That's the case, for instance, with EMail Connection, from the company of the same name. Introduced in 1992, EMail Connection has an installed base of hundreds of thousands of seats, the vendor says. EMail Connection is billed as the first e-mail client that supported every major messaging interface, including not only Microsoft's Messaging API (MAPI) but Novell's Message Handling Service (MHS), Lotus's Vendor-Independent Messaging (VIM), and Internet standards. It can be a client to a variety of on-line services, including AOL, Prodigy, CompuServe, and MCI. MAPI-compatible fax servers can send faxes, using e-mail addressing.
EMail Connection does not curre
ntly integrate voice mail, thus it falls short of full universal inbox functionality. However, EMail Connection 3.1 is compliant with Multipurpose Internet Mail Extension (MIME), which will provide a basis for voice mail in the future, and voice-mail integration is currently under way in the EMail Connection development group.
The Urge to Merge
Some e-mail, fax, and voice-mail vendors have agreed to get their products to work together. For instance, one common universal inbox solution consists of Notes Mail and Intuity Multimedia Messaging Server (MMS), linked by the Lotus Telephony One-Stop.
Novell has long promoted Computer Associate's FaxServe (from CA's Cheyenne division) as the recommended fax solution for GroupWise. FaxServe integrates tightly with the Novell Directory Service, and you can manage it as an NDS object under NWAdmin. Importing users from NetWare to GroupWise and FaxServe is quite straightforward, eliminating the need to manually add users in multiple places. Together,
GroupWise, CallWare, and FaxServe make one of the more manageable unified messaging solutions, largely because NDS ties them all together. A further level of management integration is possible through Novell's ManageWise. Novell and CA have also announced enterprise-level management for GroupWise, IntranetWare, NetWare, and integration with Novell's ManageWise. This integration would use CA's Unicenter TNG (The Next Generation), CA's end-to-end management solution, which also offers management of NT servers. Eldon Greenwood, Novell senior director of product strategy, says customers can expect "major leaps" in management integration. "NDS will be available on NT around the end of the year," he said. "Then NDS will be available on the three major platforms where GroupWise runs: NetWare, NT, and Unix.
Microsoft Exchange, however, seems to be the environment most unified messaging vendors are eager to support, or to increase support for. Thus, for instance, Octel started supporting Exchange only, while Luc
ent is adding Exchange support. Although Notes/cc:Mail continue to be the e-mail market leaders, many observers see more growth potential with Exchange.
Drawbacks
The universal inbox does not suit all users. In particular, if all you are doing is combining multiple mailboxes, you might want to think about what the advantages are. If each mailbox goes with a different job function, for instance, it could be better to keep them separate organizationally.
The universal inbox might be even less suited to the user who is not e-mail-centric. For example, "an accountant who 'lives' in Excel might prefer the ability to send e-mail and faxes directly from Excel, and might be content to pick up voice mail the old-fashioned way," says David Marshak, a senior consultant with the Patricia Seybold Group, in Boston. Also, if receiving spreadsheets regularly, using a particular directory might be better than using e-mail to get them.
Network managers should also be aware that many universal inbox s
olutions suffer from fragmented administration and message stores. For instance, you may have to add a new user to the operating system for basic network log-in, to the PBX, to the voice-mail system, and to the e-mail system, each as a separate manual operation.
All the vendors mentioned other than Octel also implement separate message stores rather than storing voice mail in the e-mail message store. Only Octel uses the e-mail message store (Exchange, in this case) to store all types of messages, a more manageable and efficient architecture. (It does create a single point of failure and might not be desirable if the voice-mail server would otherwise be significantly more reliable than the e-mail server.) As Robert Wohnoutka, Octel senior product manager for unified messaging, describes: "In many other systems, if you delete a message, and it is stored in two places, the system has to coordinate those two places. Some can't do it in real time. With a single store, there are fewer delays and fewer opport
unities for problems."
Other potential drawbacks include cost and support. Universal inbox functionality itself can cost as little as $40 a seat beyond the price of hardware and e-mail, voice mail, and fax mail. However, "it's often difficult to prove a return on investment for the universal inbox," says Michael Durr, chief analyst with Michael Durr and Associates (Cape Coral, FL), a marketing research and consulting firm.
Further, he says, vendors typically have expertise in either e-mail or telephony; few are truly expert in both. "If you have to choose," says Durr, "traditional wisdom says it's easier for a telephony vendor to learn e-mail than vice versa."
For these reasons, the universal inbox, though appealing, has not been widely implemented. However, unified administration should become more common, particularly as Microsoft evolves its directory technology. Unified message stores, too, will become more available. Costs will come down, and vendors will gain expertise. Thus, there is
hope for users suffering from messaging mania.
Where to Find
Applied Voice Technology (AVT)
Kirkland, WA
Phone: 206-820-6000
Internet:
http://www.appliedvoice.com
The Universal Inbox
