More Information

Unified messaging (UM) is the concept of bringing together all messaging media such as voice messaging,

UM is the ability to retrieve and send voice, fax, and email messages from a single interface, including mobile phone, fixed network phone, or personal computer. The market need for UM is for customers who need more control over communications, whether they be users who want to be in touch anytime, anywhere, or whether they be users who want more protection of privacy and/or personal time.

Research

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Mobile in Minute papers

Unified Messaging

Unified Messaging is an Advanced Messaging capability that enables the delivery of Value-added Services to end-users that make mobile communications simpler, easier to use, and more productive.

UM capabilities:

Single delivery:

Single repository:

Single access:

Single notification:

One of the most significant aspects of UM is the ability to integrate UM with other applications. For example, the UM system could detect a received email, determine that the customer is on his mobile phone, and send an email notification to a SMSC. The SMSC would send a SMS to the user. The user would have the ability to decide if the email is important enough to receive immediately to the phone via SMS, to read later, to call the person via voice call, or perhaps to listen to the email via text-to-speech conversion.

UM benefits from certain core technologies such as text-to-speech, speech-to-text, and voice recognition capabilities. However, UM will also benefit further from certain supplemental technologies such as presence and availability, location-based service, and mobile IP technologies, which may all be used to further personalize the user's messaging.

Presence and availability systems may be used to detect that the user is in a certain local, and based on personal profiles, determine if the user is willing/able to receive messages immediately (and in which message format) or whether to store the messages for future retrieval. Location determination technology further enhances the support for UM by providing more specific location information.

Um coupled with call management and location systems could allow some useful communications management capabilities. For instance, a caller could be prompted to speak his name to the UM system, and based on the location of the customer, the system could convert the spoken word to text and send to the customer via SMS while the caller is on hold. The customer could then decide to receive the voice call or allow the system to handle the messaging.

Mobile IP technologies are especially important for packet networks such as 2.5G, 3G (and beyond), wireless computing, and advanced messaging. UM will be an integral component to advanced messaging applications, as 3G systems allow for multi-media messaging services that will require management of the many message types that the customer will engage in sending/receiving.

Unified Messaging vs. Unified Communications

While unified messaging tends to be associated with asynchronous communications, unified communications is typically associated with more real-time communications. Capabilities such as Presence and Location Based Services applications enable the detection and determination of end-user presence, availability, and/or preferences for communications, which include network usage status, device status/preference, communications availability/preference, and privacy considerations. All of these attributes enable Personalization and are thus enable bundling/unbundling of VAS packages.

Additional technologies that enable unified communications include mobile directories and Mobile Instant Messaging applications, which engender more real-time communications by promoting a community of interest and presentation of presence and/or availability of the closed user group.

Various Mobile IN technologies enable the detection of the identity of the calling party (communications initiator), allowing the target (of the communications) to intelligently decide whether to accept the communications in real-time or to defer to the mailbox or other secondary call treatment.

More information

See the following Mobile in a Minute white papers for more information about additional messaging topics: