InformationWeek: The Business Value of Technology

Sun Microsystems says it will work with Premiere Technologies Inc., a provider of conferencing and fax services, to provide unified messaging services that use the Web. At the same time, Lucent Technologies and Compaq plan to integrate Lucent's Octel Unified Messenger for Microsoft Exchange Server with Compaq's ProLiant and AlphaServer platforms.

"For smaller companies, this lets you bring in unified messaging without much IT expertise on hand," says David Holeman, CIO of Viaticus Inc., a life insurance company in Chicago that uses Lucent's Octel platform.

Unified messaging can reduce messaging costs in several ways. By integrating voice and E-mail directories on one platform, companies can consolidate directory expenses. Integrating E-mail and voice mail on a single system can also increase the productivity of employees who spend less time each day checking fewer messaging platforms. The Radicati Group estimates that employees can save 25 to 38 minutes each day by checking a single messaging platform, with annual productivity gains of $3,600 to $7,800 per employee.

However, companies have been slow to deploy unified messaging platforms, in part because unified messaging software often isn't well-integrated with server hardware. "One of the things holding back unified messaging has been difficulty in integrating all the different pieces," says Blair Pleasant, director of communications analysis at the Pelorus Group. "But integrating unified messaging on server platforms takes away one of the main barriers to integration and implementation."