NEW YORK-A parallel universe of messaging service providers is coming into existence alongside Internet service providers to manage and unify the proliferation of devices and modes by which people receive communications.
Increasing numbers of wireless and wireline devices are transmitting growing quantities of fax, e-mail and voice-mail messages. However, the systems that manage these different communications media typically are separate and run independently from each other.
Therein lies a significant business opportunity for the new breed of MSPs, said Daniel M. Winokur, vice president of business development for USA.NET Inc., Colorado Springs, Colo., at the recent “Fall Internet World ’99.”
“I believe there will be a migration, which already has begun to occur. Messaging will move away from the perimeter where it is now, further upstream, closer to the backbone of the network,” he said.
“Who is migrating? Families and individuals, small- and medium-size businesses, enterprises, virtual industries with specialized applications and connectivity providers-ISPs, telcos, wireless operators.
“Some are outsources to network providers where the messages reside. Some want to focus on the pipes and form relationships with applications services providers, of which MSPs are one.”
In the not so distant future, Winokur envisions a messaging environment that is unified and wireless, facilitates commerce transactions, permits group dispatch of content, imposes spam controls and permits fully archived services.
“With full archive, people will become reliant on messaging to communicate both voice and text, and messaging could become their main work environment.”
Although the terms “unified messaging” and “instant messaging” often are used interchangeably, they are different, Winokure noted.
“Instant messaging is a real-time, direct connection that doesn’t go through a messaging system,” he said.
“Unified messaging is store-and-forward messaging for routing intelligence.”
The new Wireless Application Protocol technology is a tremendous catalyst for the advancement of unified messaging, which promises a future of “anywhere, anytime, access to any message, whether fax, voice mail or e-mail,” he said.
Telecommunications customers are unlikely to undertake such a feat individually “because there are no economies of scale within the context of a single company, even a large one, to justify the investment in expensive new capabilities, including the hardware and software gateways to paging, cellular, fax and [Internet Protocol] networks.”
MSPs like USA.NET, however, plan to leverage economies of scale over millions instead of thousands of users, thereby gaining the muscle to provide best-of-breed service in a communications world of fast-moving technological advancement, he said.
As a “good interim solution,” corporate end users that need to write down a significant capital investment in communications systems may opt for integrated messaging before moving on to unified messaging, Winokur added.
This “synchronizes a [private branch exchange] proprietary voice mail system, e-mail … often run by independent companies, and a fax network with an additional layer of user interface intelligence,” Winokur said.
The disadvantages of this approach are its limited flexibility, greater complexity, lack of standards like WAP offers and, in many cases, the inability to filter messages or provide message notification alerts. Furthermore, unified messaging is better suited to bringing public switched telephone, paging and cellular phone networks into the loop, he said.
“I’m from Denver, where U S West is called U S Worst, but it has a (messaging link among a customer’s) business [personal communications services], residential wireline and business PBX line,” Winokur said.
“Ultimately, unified messaging will link all messages and allow conditional action based on their content. The cellular providers and the [local exchange carriers] are best positioned to play in this space.”
While wireless messaging’s interfaces and its bandwidth are limited,
“the utility a user derives from mobile access to asynchronous information is enormous,” he added.
