VPIM Future

Unified Messaging is a highly sought-after solution for managing voice mail, email, faxes and paper, and is only at the beginning of its growth curve. In fact, the market is projected to grow to $5 billion by 2005 from $549 million in 2000, according to Frost & Sullivan Inc., Mountain View, Calif.

The real importance of VPIM is that it is breaking down the barriers between email and voice mail. Of course this is what Unified Messaging is supposed to be doing. But Unified Messaging is complex to implement and depends on the use of APIs. There is currently no single, agreed API through which to synchronize voice mail and email.

VPIM doesn't require any new API's. Once the voice mail message has become an SMPT/MIME email note it can wander happily over the Internet and is very likely to be acceptable when it arrives at its final destination.

VPIM promises to do for voice mail what standards such as SMTP (simple mail transport protocol) and POP (post office protocol) did for email, which is enable dozens of disparate software systems to exchange messages with each other over the Internet. Currently, voice mail systems used by businesses and phone companies are proprietary and therefore incompatible; users can only perform functions such as message forwarding and broadcasting within their own systems.