Sun Microsystems says it will work with Premiere Technologies Inc., a provider of conferencing and fax services, to provide unified messaging services that use the Web. At the same time, Lucent Technologies and Compaq plan to integrate Lucent's Octel Unified Messenger for Microsoft Exchange Server with Compaq's ProLiant and AlphaServer platforms.
Unified messaging can reduce messaging costs in several ways.
By integrating voice and E-mail directories on one platform, companies can consolidate directory expenses. Integrating E-mail and voice mail on a single system can also increase the productivity of employees who spend less time each day checking fewer messaging platforms. However, companies have been slow to deploy unified messaging platforms, in part because unified messaging software often isn't well-integrated with server hardware. But integrating unified messaging on server platforms takes away one of the main barriers to integration and implementation.