October 1999

BY RICH TEHRANI

Believe it or not, TMC was not an early adopter of voice mail. In fact we didn't get voice mail until about 4 years ago — very late in the game. There were a number of reasons for our late entry, perhaps the most important being that our old PBX didn't support it. When we finally did purchase a new PBX and voice mail system, as luck would have it, we were once again behind the curve as unified messaging came onto the scene.

About a year ago, TMC expanded, relocating our editorial and art departments into another building. Thankfully, this new office (which we refer to as "TMC2") has a TeleVantage PC-PBX courtesy of Artisoft, coupled with Artisoft's unified messaging system. Needless to say, I am jealous of the people over at TMC2 and as soon as we have time, we will upgrade to unified messaging in "TMC1" as well. As is common in many offices, there is so much going on that we don't always have time to purchase and install all the new products we need.

But just when we all thought unified messaging was state of the art, along comes a new technology that is even more intriguing. In a recent discussion with representatives from White Pine Software  at CTI™ EXPO Spring '99, they introduced me to a concept that I had not seen before called collaborative messaging, one step beyond unified messaging. Armed with video cameras and a high-speed network, workers can significantly increase productivity through the use of collaborative computing. This is especially true when you throw in Internet telephony as the transport medium.

At present I am not a big user of collaborative computing since our editorial offices are located only about a mile away from our corporate offices. It isn't too much trouble to have face-to-face meetings as required. But collaborative computing is a reality, and the market is growing quite nicely as more and more corporations have to manage disparate offices and utilize remote workers.

Even though collaborative computing may not be a necessity for me right now, collaborative messaging can be quite handy. One of the most frustrating things I deal with on a daily basis is setting up meetings. If Murphy's Law had a sub section that applied to meetings, it would probably go something like this: No matter how many people are scheduled to be in your meeting, there is always one person (usually the most important) who can't make it.

Until now, you would hold off the meeting or have the meeting as planned minus the one participant. You could e-mail a summary of the meeting to the participant who was missing, but is that really a substitute for being there? Most of the time, the nuances and richness of the meeting can only be appreciated firsthand.

Enter collaborative messaging: the ability to record and send an entire electronic meeting or collaborative session to anyone with a computer. Even if you apply this concept to training alone, you will boost your corporation's productivity immensely. I personally spend at least two or three days out of each month educating new hires about communications, networking, and the Internet. Many times intelligent questions are asked in a meeting that I would love others to hear answers to. If I were to hold these classes electronically and record them, I could easily forward the messages to future hires.

There are dozens of uses for collaborative messaging, and the technology is very cutting edge at the moment. I haven't heard too many vendors pushing collaborative messaging yet but I suspect that it will be all the rage in the near future. If you're like me, you are always looking to do more with less. As telephony begins to travel over IP networks and we all enjoy adequate bandwidth and video cameras, collaborative computing can truly help us become even more productive while requiring minimal investment.

Although TMC may have been late to the voice mail game, we've learned that enabling our team members with productivity-boosting technology benefits each member as well as the company as a whole. I believe business success is directly linked to productivity, and anything I can find that keeps our productivity levels on the upswing is invaluable to me.

I hope this glimpse into the future of messaging helps you and your company become productive. Of course, if you are already using this technology, please drop me a line so I can share your story with others who can benefit form the next wave of messaging.

What is happening to communications? It seems that in the last few years the communications world has turned upside down. And for those of us who know what goes on behind the scenes, it is clear that this is exactly what has happened. Since the turn of the century, the entire communications industry churned out closed, proprietary products that locked customers into a single vendor solution. Worse yet, many manufacturers developed disparate product lines aimed at the capacity needs of their customer base, forcing forklift upgrades as customers grew.

Not until Novell and Lucent worked together at the early part of this decade to allow a network server’s core OS to communicate with a PBX did the telecommunications world begin to open up. Later, Microsoft joined in by introducing TAPI (Telephony Application Programming Interface). Computer components began to communicate with telephony components, giving birth to the CTI (computer-telephony integration) industry.

Although CTI brought the world of communications a long way from the days of proprietary, closed systems, the future would open up communications even further. In the last four or five years, PC software has been developed by companies such as VocalTec, Netspeak, and Microsoft that allows us to use the Internet to transmit telephone calls. Thus the Internet telephony industry was born.

Although many would say that Internet telephony is an evolution of the communications industry, I firmly believe it is a revolution. The definition of the word revolution is: “The overthrow or renunciation of one government, and the substitution of another, by the governed.” If you look closely at what has happened to the world of communications, you see that many people equipped with simple PCs and modems began to use Internet telephony. Microsoft chimed in with the timely release of its free NetMeeting Internet telephony software, sparking even more interest in the industry.

In its infancy, Internet or IP telephony was dismissed as a toy by traditional service providers and equipment makers. Within a few years, usage of Internet telephony grew rapidly and companies such as VocalTec who supplied Internet telephony desktop software started building Internet telephony gateways, allowing anyone with a telephone to easily gain access to an Internet telephony network. Soon AT&T and other service providers, fearing loss of revenue, started to explore Internet telephony service. As the demand increased over 50 Internet telephony gateway manufacturers came onto the scene.

It is now generally accepted that telephony will migrate onto IP-based networks, and it all happened when Internet telephony software got into the hands of a few early adopters. These early adopters caused an overthrow in the way we perceive telecom.

I am increasingly amazed at the innovations that have been brought about by the introduction of IP onto our public telephone network. Internet unified messaging, collaborative computing, Internet call waiting, and Internet telephony-assisted e-commerce are just a few. Every week, I speak with new start-up companies that receive millions in venture capital funding, allowing them to develop even more incredible Internet telephony products. Thankfully, there is a venue where you can witness all of the latest communications solutions under one roof. If you haven’t guessed it by now, that venue is CTI™ EXPO in Las Vegas, Nevada, December 7-9, 1999.

As we approach the new millenium, expect the communications market to move more rapidly than just about any other industry; and with rapid change comes opportunity. Opportunity for service providers to make money, call centers to increase customer satisfaction and sales, corporations to increase productivity and cut costs. Resellers get to sell the latest products to everyone listed above. There is no better place than CTI™ EXPO to learn from over 400 exhibitors how communications solutions will evolve into the future and no better time to register for this event than today at www.ctiexpo.com.

I personally hope to see you there. But please leave your weapons at home because, at least for now, this revolution is peaceful.

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As telephony begins to travel over IP networks, collaborative computing can help us become more productive while requiring minimal investment.

In three years, the circulation of CTI magazine has increased to over 75,000 subscribers, each of whom have personally requested to receive the leading magazine on voice and data convergence. This magazine competes for your valuable time with many other magazines, including those devoted to telephony or the datacom industries. Having been an MIS director for years, I have striven to provide you with a publication that is both objective and in-depth, allowing you to trust CTI when making purchasing decisions. CTI is the kind of magazine I always needed in my job. To keep current in the rapidly advancing convergence market, it is imperative to not only know what is happening today but also to be aware of what will happen tomorrow.

This is why, aside from the news and columns you find in CTI, you also find a wealth of vendor contributed editorial that is of the utmost quality and objectivity. We are proud to have leading companies in our industry write articles for CTI magazine because they are advancing the topics you need to know about faster than any journalist can keep up with it. It really is impossible for any team of journalists alone to keep up with all the changes taking place in this fast-paced market.

We have been able to successfully blend vendor-contributed editorial into our mix by adhering to the most stringent guidelines possible, ensuring that the articles you read are truly educational and informative and not just sales pitches for the authors’ products.

By accepting only the highest quality contributed editorial, CTI magazine increases the number of available authors on a given subject by an order of magnitude over magazines that rely exclusively on in-house editors. By drawing from such a huge pool of writers, we are able to tap into the best writers who can convey difficult yet crucial concepts succinctly while simultaneously keeping you engaged in the material.

In fact, a survey conducted for CTI by Simmons Market Research, a leading publishing research firm, shows that 88 percent of our readers find the feature articles in CTI useful. Only the news section at 91 percent is more useful to you. TMC Labs reviews rated at 86 percent, and our regular columns rate at 80 percent (although I’m sure everyone reads all of my columns).

The overall results of this survey were quite impressive and we intend to continue providing you the information you need in a format you appreciate. As always, we are ready to change with the market as needed to keep you on the edge of technology and to help you go further in your career. Please feel free to drop me a line at rtehrani@tmcnet.com at any time to tell me what you like, don’t like, or want to see in CTI.

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