Voice-mail - Unified Messaging With VoIP

Unified Messaging With VoIP

Corporate voice-mail did not change much until the advent of Voice over IP (VoIP — voice being transmitted over the internet) and the development of IP telephony applications to replace legacy PBX telephony (called TDM technologies). IP (Internet Protocol) telephony changed the style and technology of PBXs and the way voice-mail systems integrated with them. This, in turn, facilitated a new generation of Unified Messaging, which is now likely to catch on widely. The flexibility, manageability, lower costs, reliability, speed, and user convenience for messaging convergence is now possible where it wasn't before. This might include intra- and inter-enterprise contacts, mobile contacts, proactive application information delivery, and customer contact applications.

The corporate IP telephony-based voice-mail CPEmarket is served by several vendors including Avaya, Cisco systems, Adomo, Interactive Intelligence, Nortel, Mitel, 3Com, and AVST.Popova, Elka (2007-07-05). "Customers Attest to the Value of Flexible Independent Messaging Solutions". Frost & Sullivan. http://www.frost.com/prod/servlet/market-insight-top.pag?docid=101501095. Retrieved 2009-05-12. Their marketing strategy will have to address the need to support a variety of legacy PBXs as well as new Voice over IP as enterprises migrate towards converging IP-based telecommunications. A similar situation exists for the carrier market for voice-mail servers, currently dominated by Comverse Technology, with some share still held by Lucent Technologies.

VoIP telephony enables centralized, shared servers, with remote administration and usage management for corporate (enterprise) customers. In the past, carriers lost this business because it was far too expensive and inflexible to have remote managed facilities by the phone company. With VoIP, remote administration is far more economical. This technology has re-opened opportunities for carriers to offer hosted, shared services for all forms of converged IP telecommunications, including IP-PBX and voice-mail services. Because of the convergence of wired and wireless communications, such services may also include support of a variety of multi-modal handheld and desktop end user devices. This service, when offered for multiple extensions or phone numbers is sometimes also called Unified Voice-mail.