Unified Communications In 2001

The unified communications/unified messaging (UC/UM) industry entered last year with a chip on its shoulder, blaming the Y2K panic as an excuse used by enterprise IT management to defer making any decisions about implementing unified messaging. But that was only part of the problem, because there was also no earthshaking, cost-justifying demand from end users to acquire any of the cross-media and cross-modal communications capabilities that the industry could offer. So, the just-ended Y2K has to be viewed as a year of learning, transition, and renewed promise for the future.

The UC/UM industry has been targeting enterprise organizations with customer premise equipment in the form of upgraded, UC/UM-enabled voicemail systems. They push the idea of the single, multimedia mailbox, individual convenience and productivity time savings for message retrieval, particularly at the desktop, as well lower total cost of ownership for supporting multimedia messaging within the organization. However, the bottom line was that not all end users really needed the newest capabilities. For those that did the wireless world was also in the process of drastic change and evolution (2.5G/3G broadband, screenphones, WAP, telephone-enabled palm devices, etc.). For large companies with heavy investments in legacy voicemail systems and proprietary voice messaging networks, customer premises equipment (CPE) uptake has been very slow.

Trends and Expectations

A number of key trends became clearer last year, including:

Industry players finally acknowledged that users need unified communications including call management and call control functions, rather than just unified messaging, and this convergence was reflected in mergers such as Phone.com and Software.com as well as in increased offerings for one-number personal access services.

Although initially UC equipment sales were being made largely to "green field" enterprises, there has been a marked increase in replacing outdated legacy voicemail systems in 2000, mostly for smaller and medium sized companies.

Service providers became more active, catering to consumers and as Application Service Providers (ASPs) targeting small and medium businesses. However, many of the UC/UM service offerings followed the free business model of the Internet, and such service offerings will probably need to mature into fee-based offerings to survive in the long-term.

We still have not seen good solutions for integrating enterprise UC CPE solutions with wireless UC services.

We have just begun to see open, standards-based, Internet Telephony switches being offered to enterprises and service providers, which will facilitate the growing convergence of real-time and messaging UC. Likewise, increased broadband transport for wired and wireless access will support voice communications over IP networks.

UC platform implementations have increasingly been based upon native IP infrastructures, and using VoIP gateways to work with legacy network (PSTN, SS7) switches and enterprise PBXs.

The rapidly exploding shift to wireless personal phones for both consumers and business users will be driving converged communications further for both market segments. The big surprise was the tremendous uptake of wireless text messaging in Europe and Japan, where inexpensive Short Message Service (SMS) and NTT DoCoMo's i-mode paved the way. A few announcements in the U.S. indicate similar marketing will start in 2001.

The focus on speech technologies for wireless hands-free, eyes-free interfaces increased and improved, particularly for use in a car.

There was continuing convergence of multimedia interfaces for telephones, not only by the big wireless players such as Nokia and Motorola, but also by some newcomers for IP phones at the desktop to further support unified and multi-modal communications services. More miniature alphanumeric keyboards appeared for text entry on wireless multimedia telephones and text pagers to allow two-way silent messaging as a dynamic option for each individual user. At the same time, we are seeing somewhat larger display screens becoming available on wireless phones. The logical convergence of the palmtop form factor with Internet Telephony is also starting to happen, as witness Handspring's product offering and promises from Palm and Microsoft.

We have not seen much convergence of speech and text input and output for a combined, integrated approach to personal communications management interface from multimedia telephones (wireless, desktop). Recent research has shown that combining speech recognition with visual reinforcement can provide a more effective user input interface.

We saw more attempts at making streaming IP video part of the communications landscape, but that is still a questionable need for most person-to-person interactions.

Bluetooth standards made progress in 2000 to support initial product offerings in 2001. This wireless approach to device connectivity will enable minimal wireless phone configurations to be augmented by other portable and non-portable devices.

Messaging industry giants began doing battle with AOL for open access to instant messaging, which will enable IM to converge into UC/UM technologies, but the battle is still raging.

The escalating volume of personal messaging activity has portended the need for both intelligent message filtering and message archiving management tools and services, and we expect to see further advances in these areas of technology for future network-based service offerings.

Presence management and location services for wireless users in Europe is setting the stage for its important role in enabling real-time connections and message notifications and delivery for all two-way personal communications.

While there has been a lot of talk about the importance of directory functions for personalized communications management, there was relatively little exciting news here.

We think that the primary driver for wireless communications will still remain person-to-person contacts, but there has been a lot of hype for wireless Web information. We do see practical benefits for bite-sized information delivery to wireless devices from personalized application services, but we agree with some of the arguments about the practical limitations for mobile information access.

Now that we are past the excuses of Y2K, the path towards universal UC is still constrained by both basic technology issues, as well as better understanding of market needs, including:

Lack of standards

Migration from our legacy forms of communication

Impact of new multimedia communications devices

Automated intelligence to simplify the task of personal communications management

Developing practical interoperability between wireline and personalized wireless telephones for individual users

Learning more about what features and functions end users really need in the new world of multi-modal personal communications

Developing more effective integrated user interfaces that exploit both speech and text modes of communicating and control, since it is easier to speak than type, but faster to read than listen

Providing cost-effective customer support for the new complexities of UC services

Etiquette issues for responsive cross-modal communications and

Security and privacy concerns

For all of the above considerations, we see UC convergence becoming better understood and faster progress being made on all fronts of this complex capability. We also hope that the new non-profit Unified Communications Consortium will provide a practical focal point for the missing pieces of universal UC to come together for both enterprise and consumer needs.