United Front Don't look now--you may soon be able to have all types of messages coming into a single inbox.
By Mike Hogan
Opinions expressed by Entrepreneur contributors are their own.
What if your voice mail, faxes, e-mail and instant messages weredelivered to the same inbox? That would be a good thing-especiallyif you could pick just the message types and interface youwanted.
It's called unified messaging (UM) or unified communications(UC), and it's not new. It has been tried for years withlimited success. That's going to change.
Researchers say spending on UC will increase by a factor of 10by 2008, as the number of blended inboxes grows about 500 percent.By then, says market research firm The Radicati Group, as many as95 million folks worldwide will be able to pick up some combinationof messages from a universal inbox. By the way, that solves anotherproblem, adds Radicati market analyst Teney Takahashi: jugglingdifferent address books.
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