Look around - how many message stores do you have?  And how many did you have five, ten, or fifteen years ago? For me, the current inventory reads:

• Basex e-mail 
• Corporate voicemail (unified with e-mail) 
• Mobile phone voicemail 
• Home voicemail (seldom used) 
• SMS

There is only one point of unification, as our corporate voicemail system forwards voicemail messages to my e-mail inbox (not just a notification, but an actual .wav sound file as attachment).  Other than that, if someone wants to tell me something, it could be anywhere.

Many people have more repositories than me.  Some knowledge workers have a personal e-mail account, others have a personal mobile phone as well as a corporate mobile - both with separate voicemails.

Now think about how many software clients one needs to access different types of messages. For me, the list reads:

• IBM Instant Messaging (née Lotus Sametime) 
• Lotus Notes for e-mail 
• Voice mail (DTMF interface and Web) 
• Mobile phone

As knowledge workers become more mobile, it becomes clear how the fragmented nature of this situation impacts how we work and how productive we can be.  Many IT vendors talk about "unifying" the experience but few organizations have actually deployed systems that actually address this.

In the coming weeks, we'll take a look at some solutions to this common problem.