November/December 2001

BY GADI MAZOR

Handheld, wireless e-mail devices respond to one of the biggest challenges facing todays mobile professionals staying connected to their office and messages. Todays competitive business environment demands that mobile users communicate constantly literally conduct business while in a meeting, sitting in a taxi, or waiting at an airport. Users want to know immediately when theyve received important voice mails, e-mails, and faxes. They want to search through and prioritize voice mail messages and read e-mail attachments and faxes on their wireless devices.

However, this task is not as easy as one might assume. For example, up to 40 percent of e-mail messages have attachments that a thin client wireless handheld device typically cannot open. The attachments are in a word-processing, spreadsheet, or presentation format designed for PCs, not text-based handhelds or wireless application protocol (WAP) devices. Handheld and PDA devices typically require special memory-intensive plug-ins to view specific file formats, and handhelds often may not be connected to printers or other output devices (see our roundup of Internet Appliances on page 24 for more information on specific handheld devices).

Yet, attachments often include critically important documents such as contracts, agendas, and proposals that must be read and responded to quickly, as well as contact information that must be accessed in order to reply to the sender. The result? Users receive e-mail messages like review the attached contract immediately and they are stuck. Their handheld does not give them the access they need. What type of solutions are available to todays mobile users to help ensure that their wireless devices provide them with anywhere, anytime access to the business critical information contained in all their messages and attachments?

Recently introduced message-conversion server solutions give wireless e-mail users access to all their e-mail messages and attachments even to the point of letting them read faxes and access voice mail on their thinnest clients.

ACCESSIBILITY AND MANAGEABILITY
How do these message-conversion solutions work? They perform by providing users with accessibility and manageability for all types of messages on any type of handheld device. Comprehensive message conversion solutions can work in conjunction with infrastructures that store and manage fax, voice, and e-mail messages in a unified context in one mailbox. The mailbox plays an important role by ensuring that information can be located and forwarded. However, even when those messages are stored in one mailbox, they do not all have the same qualities of accessibility and manageability. This is where newly available message-conversion server solutions come into play. These solutions not only make any kind of message accessible on any kind of device, but they also m aintain the documents text content and message format. These new solutions make messages usable by providing a single message of device-independent business-ready information.

FEATURES FOR THE END USER
Message-conversion servers can be offered as ASP solutions or as enterprise software installed at a user site. A setup can be completely transparent to end users, who simply add two e-mail addresses to their address books: A read address and a print address. When users receive a message with an attachment, they can forward the message to a read e-mail address. The server software can create an e-mail response with the text of the attachment in the message body. Within minutes of forwarding the message, the user can receive a response e-mail message from the server and read the attachment text directly on their handheld device in the same way that they read any e-mail message.

A user can also print a message and attachments on any local fax machine. The user forwards an e-mail message to a print e-mail address after entering the number of a convenient fax machine in the message subject line. The server software can convert the message and any attachments into a fax. Within minutes, the fax prints out on the local machine specified in the subject line. The solutions can also analyze faxes, identify recipients, convert the messages into editable text, and route the faxes within a customers messaging system.

In the near future, solutions will be available that allow users to extract phone numbers from voice mail messages, identify the sender, and compress messages to let users hear them on their wireless devices.

FEATURES FOR SYSTEM ADMINISTRATORS
In order to be accepted by corporate IT staff, message-conversion server solutions are designed for easy installation, integration, and administration. They are available as Internet-based, ASP solutions for small workgroups and individuals and as in-house, behind-the-firewall, highly scalable solutions for corporations and server-farm-based environments such as telcos, ASPs, and ISPs.

Whether used entirely within a corporate domain or configured as an encrypted ASP service, these solutions are compliant with industry standards. PC- and Web-based consoles let administrators access and manage the solutions from anywhere on the corporate network. In enterprise environments, LDAP-compatible access features let administrators efficiently manage eligible service users.

Message-conversion server solutions feature an open, scalable architecture that lets service providers combine third-party message sources, destination systems, a specialty vendors conversion engines, and proprietary conversion systems into virtually any messaging configuration. The solutions address the needs of various markets by accessing different message sources, linking to different destinations, and integrating different conversion engines.

Other requirements of message-conversion servers include:

• Easy links to both message source and destination messaging systems;
• The ability to let developers build and customize links to their systems while maintaining a servers data integrity and protecting processes from ill-behaved third-party components;
• Scalability to support a few users by running the server on one standard machine to carrier environments with multiple conversion engines and redundant systems;
• Customization of the server set-up procedure with different links to different systems without the need to recompile the server components or the set-up procedure itself;
• Parallel processing of message conversion and load balancing over multiple CPUs in the same machine or multiple machines on the network; and
• The ability to let relatively high CPU-consumption conversion processes run on servers that run other mission-critical applications.

Thin-client, wireless handheld devices are important tools that provide mobile users with access to e-mail messages. However, mobile users also need to access and use e-mail attachments and other types of messages. By providing users with anywhere, anytime access to and use of e-mail, fax, and e-mail attachments, message-conversion server solutions provide real productivity increases and are cost effective. Mobile users save time by not having to return to their desktop PC or connect to their laptop. Decisions are made faster because critical business documents attached to e-mails are usable and quickly accessible.

Gadi Mazor is co-founder, president, and chief executive officer of Onset Technology. Onset is a provider of solutions that convert messages including e-mail attachments, fax, and voice into device-independent information that individuals and businesses can easily and immediately access and use. 

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BY PRISCILLA AWDE

Although it is a relatively old technology, unified messaging is now finding a place in todays corporate environment for busy executives who are increasingly on the move and who rarely work in one place. The guiding principal behind the system is to create a central source for all messages, whether they are from an enterprise server or a service provider, which may be accessed through one number. Rather than having a string of contact numbers on their business cards, users now need only one through which they can either be reached directly or via voice, fax, or text messages.

Convenience is not the only driver; competition is prompting companies and their employees to be more efficient and it is becoming increasingly unacceptable for people to be unavailable or to take too long to respond to messages. Few people can now waste the average 40 minutes daily it takes to access systems.

Executives not only want to be able to retrieve messages from any device (fixed or mobile), but to modify them if required and forward them to any fax, computer, or phone. Users want to be in control: They want to carry only one access device which can be used to manage, filter, and route messages according to pre-defined instructions. They want to control who can reach them and when, and to prioritize messages in short, to personalize their communications systems quickly, conveniently, and flexibly.

MANAGING THE INFORMATION FLOOD
Hubert Jakob, product manager for Siemens ICN in Munich, suggests that, The ability to retrieve messages anywhere and anytime from a variety of terminal devices and then to forward them with personal comments is a critical competitive advantage. Unified messaging makes it possible for the first time to manage the rising flood of information and optimize business processes. Users can send combined voice and e-mail messages, answer a voice message with an e-mail, forward e-mails with a voice attachment, or send faxes as attachments to e-mails.

Such is the demand that UK research group Ovum anticipates that more than 95 million unified messaging mailboxes will generate just over $5 billion in revenues by 2003. Several new technologies have been developed and combined to make unified messaging a more efficient tool than it was three years ago when it first emerged. As mobile devices, and consequently keypads, get smaller, text-to-speech and speech-to-text software have become more essential and more effective. Regardless of how they were originally sent, all messages can now be read out loud, printed, or saved electronically as text. Interactive Voice Response (IVR) systems make it relatively easy and fast to choose among options to direct messages. Since mailboxes can be accessed from a variety of devices including computers, e-mails can be read aloud via a telephone using the text-to-speech function and can then be printed on any desired machine, explains Jakob.

Higher mobile data rates are making it easier to send, receive, and manipulate text messages and bring mobile phones into the messaging loop. Broadband high-speed networks use IP transmission technology so efficiently compressed and digitized that voice, text, and electronic messages travel through the same network for display on various terminal devices. Telcos and other carriers, keen to supplement declining voice revenues with new products, are actively promoting unified messaging.

Recognizing the real and potential benefits of giving people more control over their business and personal communications, most major equipment manufacturers are developing systems to ensure fewer messages are missed or delivered late. By using a client/server architecture, systems may be scaled and adapted according to need. While complying with data protection regulations, system administrators can generate a variety of reports on a resource or user-specific basis.

Short message service (SMS) boxes may be installed to allow companies to send messages composed on PCs or other devices to employees via a GSM-900 network. These systems may be configured from PCs or laptops, or via fixed and mobile phones, and each mailbox is protected by a password. All messages are displayed and may be processed in the familiar e-mail environment. Individual users can set up their own profiles using any conventional Web browser, select personal user information, access rights and response options, distribution lists, and more, explains Jakob. Unified mailboxes can achieve significant time savings over the more traditional methods, which require access to separate messaging systems. With system costs of approximately $50,000 a unified messaging system can pay for itself in 68 days.

Priscilla Awde is a freelance telecom journalist. This article was submitted on behalf of Siemens Information and Communication Networks (ICN). Siemens ICN is a leading provider of integrated voice and data networks for enterprises, carriers, and service providers. Its comprehensive portfolio comprises IP-based convergence solutions and a full range of products for broadband access and optical transport networks, as well as the integration, services and applications business. Visit the Siemens Web site at www.icn.siemens.com.

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