Unified Messaging Service: Another form of virtual office?

Unified Messaging Service: Another form of virtual office?

JAKARTA (JP): How do we communicate? Let us count the ways. We
communicate face-to-face, through letters, or by using
telecommunications technologies such as the telegraph, telex,
telephone, fax, pager, cell phone, e-mail or short message
services (SMS).

In today's fast-moving world, you need to be able to
communicate from any place, any time. Perhaps, more importantly,
people must be able to communicate with you -- no matter where
you are -- at any time.

And, believe it or not, it is getting more and more common for
people to carry more than one cell phone, each for a different
group of people, in their pockets,

Family members, for example, are to call you at one cell
phone, while important clients are given another cell phone's
number.

If you are a celebrity, journalists would be given yet another
cell phone's number, in case they want to ask for your comments.

This is also the reason why, as reported by Taipei Times
earlier this month, the number of cell phone accounts in Taiwan
is amazingly larger than its adult population.

Today, with a sophisticated gadget like the 9210 Communicator
from Nokia, you can be accessible most of the time.

You can receive faxes, read e-mail messages and even download
data without having to get tethered to a network. However, a type
of web service called unified messaging, which is gaining ground,
can make you even more reachable.

This unified messaging service collects all the messages for
you from a variety of sources, including your different e-mail
accounts, paging services, multiple cellular and landline
telephone numbers, SMS and faxes.

All of these collected messages are stored in one central
inbox, which you can easily access with your WAP-enabled cell
phone, for example. Each time a new message arrives at your
inbox, the service will send a notification to the device of your
choice, whether a pager, cell phone or a PDA.

You will need to enter a PIN to access your messages, of
course.

In the future, sophisticated technologies such as voice
commands, text-to-voice synthesizer, Voice-over-IP (VoIP) and
Internet-to-phone will make it even easier for you to access your
messages, or more precisely, for your messages to chase you.

This more advanced type of service is called unified
communication.

In the horizon is universal messaging, a technology that will
enable messages to be delivered to anyone in the world regardless
of the type of communications device he can be contacted with.

For now, what we have is unified messaging.

Providers for this type of communications service include,
Visto (www42.visto.com), Unified Messaging Ltd.
(www.unifiedmessaging.com) and TEMS (www.tems.com).

Visto combines its unified messaging services with its
Personal Information Management (PIM) services, thus making it
like a secretary who looks after all your schedules and
communications. Whichever service you choose, the bottom line is,
people will always be able to communicate with you -- no matter
where you are. Does it not sound like a virtual office?