The UC Challenge

Although the term unified messaging (UM) is little known outside of telecom and IT circles, anyone can understand the benefit of organizing the 200-plus messages the average knowledge worker receives each day.

The concept is relatively simple. UM — or unified communications (UC), as it is being called more and more — is the convergence and management of all points of contact: phone, fax, e-mail and voice mail at home and at work. All messages go into a central store and can be accessed at any time by a variety of devices, including computer, phone, mobile phone or PDA.

Protecting the user from a constant barrage of messages are personal rules instructing the UC system when, where and how contact is preferred. The result of a perfect UC system would be no more missed calls, faxes or e-mails and an increase in efficiency.

Service revenues from UC worldwide are expected to reach $31 billion by 2007, according to Ovum (www.ovum.com). Although few carriers have deployed such solutions, IDC (www.idc.com) predicts the market will reach $1 billion by next year.

Despite the current availability of UC solutions, carriers have been reluctant to deploy them for a number of reasons. First, most subscribers don't understand the concept. Second, carriers don't want to cannibalize their own messaging revenue. And third, UC technology is in a confusing phase of development, which makes it harder to commit to one solution when a better one might be just around the R&D corner.

“The future direction of the UM/UC market is hard for a service provi`der to discern,” said John Delaney, Ovum senior analyst, in a February report on UM. “This is due to the complex interaction of developments in wireless Internet, voice over IP, ASP and free messaging services.”

Industry experts say the integration of wireless Internet access with UC solutions could be the spark that ignites both markets.

“Messaging services are the closest thing there is to a killer application for wireless Internet services — and they exist today,” Ovum stated in its report. “UM/UC services that incorporate wireless Internet access will appeal to a progressively larger segment of the total market. The mutually reinforcing effect between wireless Internet and messaging will drive a fast-growing and increasingly diverse market for wireless-enabled UM/UC services.”

Many UC vendors have integrated wireless Internet applications with their UC solutions.

“The next evolution of UC is multimedia messaging, which ties itself to 2.5G and 3G,” said Jim Kelly, Glenayre (www.glenayre.com) senior vice president and chief marketing officer. “As the wireless pipes become more robust, users will be able to have voice clips, video clips, Web albums, instant messaging and higher levels of e-mail access. There are significant developments there. We see UC as the convergence of messaging, the Inter-net and wireless.”

David A. Zimmer, founder of the Unified Communications Consortium (www.unified-communications.org), said that although wireless Internet access will play an important part in the future of UC, carriers and vendors should be careful about what content is layered on top of the UC platform.

“It depends on what it is they're integrating,” Zimmer said. “Everyone has the same examples of news, sports, stocks and weather.”

What Zimmer would prefer to see is calendars and scheduling on top of the integration of voice, fax, e-mail and real-time connection.

Ostensibly, a UC system with an innate knowledge of a user's presence and location could become a virtual personal assistant.

“Now that I have an electronic calendar, my communications systems should work with it and say, ‘Hey, this guy's out of the office’ or ‘He's in a meeting,’” he said. “Or at least the system could take a message and let the caller know I'm in a meeting. That way the caller's expectation is set.”

Early Stages

Most North American wireless carriers have yet to take the UC plunge. But a few in Europe and Canada recently have launched UC services.

Sprint Canada (www.sprint.ca) deployed Centrinity's First Class UC solution (www.centrinity.com) in February. The project targets small- and medium-sized business customers, a market many analysts believe will be on the vanguard of accepting UC solutions.

“What we've seen is that the UC providers have honed their targeting strategies,” said Aurica Yen, Yankee Group analyst, consumer market convergence (www.yankeegroup.com). “Rather than doing blanket strategies, they're starting to tailor these products to appeal to certain markets like the SOHO. The digital home office is sort of the unexplored frontier for a lot of these providers.”

Murray Souter, Sprint Canada president, consumer services small business group, said customer demand for UC prompted the company to explore its options.

“Everything started with research that indicated that our target customer — small to medium enterprise — had an inability to manage the multitude of messages that were coming at them,” Souter said.

After looking at UC solutions for 18 months, Sprint Canada selected Centrinity's First Class solution because of its low cost, quick implementation schedule and functionality, he said. Customers pay about $9.95 ($14.95 Canadian) per month for the service.

“One of our radio stations put the ad on air at 6 a.m. a day early,” Souter said. “They only ran it once, but we had 30 calls into our call center that morning just from that one ad.”

Although Souter wouldn't give actual subscriber numbers, he said Sprint Canada is pleased with the market reaction.

“It started slow but has continued to accelerate,” he said. “It's very close to our expectations.”

Souter said that in the future, additional features such as calendaring would be layered onto the First Class platform.

Picking a Platform

Being one of the first to deploy a UC service, Sprint Canada's Souter said he has fielded a large number of calls from U.S. telecommunications executives, as well as many industry and investment analysts. The carriers are considering their options carefully when it comes to UC platforms.

It's important to understand that whether they call it UC, UM or enhanced messaging, most platforms deliver the same result — a central message store accessible via a wide array of devices. Companies as large as Cisco (www.cisco.com) and as small as Centrinity offer UC solutions. Dick Hyatt, Cisco director of marketing in the Internet communications software group, said Cisco's uOne platform provides users with “anywhere, anytime, any device access to voice, voice services, messaging and data.”

Five phases of service are delivered over the uOne Platform, Hyatt said, beginning with messaging services such as voice, e-mail and fax. The second phase is calling services, including inbound and outbound call-management capabilities. This part of the platform can read e-mail messages to a user on his cellular phone via Lernout & Haus-pie's standard text-to-speed protocol. It gives users the ability to access faxes from their cellular phones and then redirect them to any nearby fax machine or printer.

Calling services on the uOne platform are all directed through a single number, which can be an individually determined number, an 800 number or a local-access number provided by the user's carrier.

These first two phases currently are available on the uOne platform. But phases three and four are still in development, Hyatt said. Phase three adds content to the platform.

“While I'm on that platform, and I got a message, I may want to check the status of order inventory, or the status of Cisco's stock price,” Hyatt said. “So while I'm on the same platform, I push another set of keys, connect to the content manager and then retrieve stock prices, enterprise information or sales-order information.”

Phase three would deliver stock prices or inventory updates wirelessly each day. Phase four allows users who have received such information to act on it — to execute a stock trade, for example.

Phase five will open up uOne to integrators, ISVs or service providers that want to develop custom applications on Cisco's platform.

SetNet (www.setnet.com), which dubs itself a provider of enhanced messaging solutions for wireless carriers, has what is essentially a UC suite of applications called CellCentric.

CellCentric offers access from any device to e-mail-to-voice, Web-by-voice, WAP mail, PIM, voice mail, forward-to-fax, SMS notification and content management.

European carriers SFR Cegetel (www.cegetel.fr) and Belgacom (www.belgacom.com) recently deployed the product, said Arif Baigmohamed, SetNet executive vice president.

The Belgacom system was launched in March, and the deployment has exceeded expectations, he said.

“The calls are running at an average of 3.8 to 3.9 minutes per day,” Baigmohamed said. “We had planned on one call every two days at 5 minutes. That number has an upward ramp, because as people get used to accessing their e-mail that way, their minutes drive higher as they get into the habit of reading attachments or diverting their e-mails to faxes, to hard copies or replying by voice.”

With SetNet's CellCentric platform, he explained, a carrier can implement each module every three to six months, rather than dumping the whole mix on subscribers all at once.

Even when carriers use this modular approach, Baigmohamed said most marketing and educational campaigns are insufficient.

“In the European companies where the e-mail-to-voice has already started, if you go to a (carrier's) retail store and ask them if you can get e-mail-to-voice, half the time, the customer-service rep doesn't know what's going on,” he said. “We found incredibly weak marketing on the operator side.”

To improve the marketing of its enhanced messaging services, SetNet is assisting carriers with market studies and product launches.

“Obviously, we get paid on capacity, and if the operators are successful, that gives us the sales we need,” Baigmohamed said.