Voice-mail - Corporate Voice-mail

Corporate Voice-mail

In the early 1980s there were over 30 companies vying for the corporate voice-mail market. Among the many contenders were IBM, VMX, Wang, Octel, ROLM, AT&T, Northern Telecom, Delphi Communications, Voice and Data Systems, Opcom, Commterm, Genesis, Brook Trout, Innovative Technology (ITI), Glenayre, BBL, AVT, AVST, Digital Sound, Centigram, Voice-mail International and Active Voice. Only a few of these companies were successful in capturing a significant market share and remain in the voice-mail business today.

ROLM Corporation, founded in 1969 by Gene Richeson, Ken Oshman, Walter Loewenstern and Robert Maxfield, was the first PBX manufacturer to offer integrated voice-mail with its PhoneMail system, its registered trademark. PhoneMail offered impressive recording quality of its digitized messages. ROLM's digital PBX (called a CBX, for Computerized Branch eXchange) was the first to enable PhoneMail to illuminate a message waiting light on ROLM phones equipped with message waiting lights (also a stutter dialtone is used with analog and digital phones). Rolm was sold to IBM, who later sold it to Siemens who offer PhoneMail in various configurations/sizes (including a micro-sized version) and its unified messaging successor, Xpressions 470. ROLM was purchased by IBM in the mid 1980s (which was a financial disaster for the profitable ROLM, as IBM clearly could not grasp the laid back, "think outside the box" attitude of ROLM, which was the #2 PBX supplier in the US from the mid 70s to late 80s), then sold half interest to the German company Siemens."COMPANY NEWS; Rolm Sale By I.B.M. To Siemens". New York Times. May 8, 1992. http://query.nytimes.com/gst/fullpage.html?res=9E0CE7D71639F93BA35756C0A964958260. Retrieved 2011-03-29. In 1992, Siemens bought ROLM entirely from IBM and the original ROLM product line was done for, except for PhoneMail (the only product Siemens did not destroy). VMX suffered from poor product and ineffective management and was about to fold when Opcom merged with it. The surviving company was called VMX, but VMX was all but erased by Opcom except for its name and patent portfolio.

Opcom, a company founded by David Ladd, developed a voice-mail system primarily marketed to smaller enterprises. Opcom pioneered and patented the feature of automated attendant (U.S. Patent numbers 4,747,124 and 4,783,796 both issued in 1988), an integral part of any voice-mail systems. The automated attendant enables callers to direct calls by pressing single digit keys, e.g. "If you are making domestic reservations, press 1; for international reservations, press ‘2'; etc." Opcom later pioneered the concept of Unified Messaging (to be discussed later in this article). Opcom eventually acquired VMX through a reverse merger, (Opcom was private and VMX was public) and the surviving company VMX was eventually acquired by Octel.

Octel Communications, founded in 1982 by Bob Cohn and Peter Olson, broadly commercialized the corporate voice messaging market. While Octel benefited from the work and experiments of others it was the first stand-alone voice-mail company to build a strong business and strategy to win in this difficult market. In addition, Octel innovated substantially new technology which contributed heavily to its success including a system architecture that was physically smaller, faster, more reliable, and much less costly than other corporate vendors. Octel's voice-mail system, was introduced in 1984, included unique system features, many of which were patented, which gave Octel market leadership. In 1990 Octel was one of the first companies to introduce the concept of Unified Messaging.

AT&T/Lucent created its version of voice-mail in the early 1990s (called Audix) but it would only work on AT&T/Lucent PBXs. Northern Telecom|Nortel developed Meridian Mail and followed the same strategy as AT&T in that Meridian Mail only worked with Northern Telecom PBXs. As a result, neither company achieved much market share with large national or multi-national accounts. AT&T spun off its equipment business into a company called Lucent Technologies, and Northern Telecom changed its name to Nortel.

By the mid-1990s, Octel had become the number one supplier of voice-mail both to corporations and to carriers. Octel had about a 60% market share in the U.S., Canada, Europe and Japan (for large corporations) and between a 30% and 100% of the carrier market, depending on the country. By 1997 Octel's biggest competitors were Audix, made by Lucent, and Meridian Mail, made by Nortel. In July 1997, Octel was purchased by Lucent Technology. Lucent's AUDIX division was merged into Octel to form the Octel Messaging Division. By 2000, some estimate that there were over 150,000,000 active users of corporate and carrier voice-mail made by the Octel Messaging Division. Shortly thereafter, Lucent spun off its corporate business, including the Octel Messaging Division, into a company known as Avaya."Avaya Octel". Voice Main, Inc.. 2008. http://www.voice-mailinc.com/products/octel/. Retrieved 2008-01-09.

Boston Technology, uReach Technologies and Comverse Technology all entered the carrier market in the early 1990s. Boston was eventually acquired by Comverse, making it the second largest supplier to carriers after Octel. However in a few years Comverse became the largest supplier to carriers with Lucent/Octel holding its leadership in the corporate market and second place with carriers. Comverse today retains its leadership of legacy voice-mail systems sold to carriers around the world. For IP-based voice-mail systems, Ericsson claims market leadership with its Ericsson Messaging-over-IP (MoIP) solution. uReach provides VoiceMail services for Verizon and a host of other Tier 1 and Tier 2 carriers and is the voice-mail system used by Verizon FIOS.