Finally, All-for-One Communications
UM (unified messaging) joins voice messaging, e-mail and fax with conventional PBXs. Legacy PBXs use serial line cards to communicate directly with fax servers and IP-based e-mail servers. UM lets you retrieve multiformat messages from a telephone or from e-mail applications using text-to-speech or speech-to-text conversion; or by attaching voicemail (wav file) or faxes (graphic file) to e-mail. When you replace that PBX with an IP-PBX, you no longer need serial line cards to communicate with IP-based technologies. UM becomes UC, or unified communications.
UC on a converged network can use existing IP resources and protocols, including XML and SIP. It integrates with LDAP directories, instant messaging, calendars and collaboration applications to take advantage of presence management and alert users to incoming messages. Then it delivers those messages in formats for each user's preferred application, such as e-mail. If, as a nomadic road warrior, you have no preference, UM will hunt you down to deliver messages based on a configurable rules-based policy. All this makes UC sound like the next killer app, but the price has to go down before UC even comes close to replacing e-mail.
Currently, UM enjoys 22 percent penetration in enterprises, according to the Telecommunications Industry Association. But that 22 percent represents high-profile users only, because of the high cost per seat and the complexity of distributing the application throughout the enterprise. Adhering to standards like SIP that get away from conventional, proprietary PBX development will increase options and decrease costs. Advances in speech recognition and text-to-speech engines also will cut prices, but we may have to sit it out in 2005.
Subsea cable alternatives can provide a level of comfort for those concerned about disruptions. Realistically, they will continue to play a small, but critical role in the short term.
Maintaining existing network infrastructures often incurs huge technical debt before newer technologies are adopted over time.
Amid ongoing regional uncertainties, telecom infrastructure in the Middle East has expand to include terrestrial low-latency network infrastructure, which offers resilience and agility in navigating political complexities without relying solely on undersea networks.
