One for all: unified messaging comes of age

The number of messaging methods and media available – print, telephone, e‐mail, text messaging, fax, etc. – can result in key members of an organisation spending significant parts of their working day simply managing their messages and the resulting responses. Because they arrive in different ways at different times, such management is difficult. Unified messaging attempts to make all messages – however they originate – available via a single interface, allowing priority and importance to be more easily discerned. This raises individual productivity and removes some of the stresses of “keeping up to date and in touch”. This paper explains the technology and suggests that a range of factors has come together finally to make unified messaging a realistic, feasible and effective solution.