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Messaging | Features/Function Enhancements

VMSs were introduced to the market in the early 1980s, and originally worked as stand-alone systems behind PBX systems. Although the first VMSs were designed and marketed by third-party suppliers, several of the leading PBX manufacturers eventually entered the market with products of their own design. Rolm and AT&T were among the first PBX manufacturers to enter the voice messaging market with products designed to work behind their own communications systems, although they could also be engineered as stand-alone systems to work behind other suppliers’ PBX systems.

Northern Telecom, one of the leading PBX suppliers, came late to the VMS market during the late 1980s, but when it introduced Meridian Mail it became the first messaging system to be fully integrated within the PBX system design. Meridian Mail used the Meridian 1 processing and switching network backplane for supporting PBX station user messaging applications. The Meridian Mail Module was installed as another cabinet stack in the Meridian 1 and tightly integrated within the overall PBX system design. Instead of using analog station interfaces and a dedicated data signaling link between the PBX system and adjunct voice messaging cabinet, Meridian Mail ports appeared to the Meridian 1 switching network as just another station port, and signaling between the Meridian Mail Module and the Meridian 1 common control complex was transmitted over the internal system processor bus. AT&T followed Northern Telecom’s example and later redesigned its Audix VMS as a multiple card slot equipment module to be installed within its Definity PBX system. The Definity Audix option offered most of the features and functions available on the larger, stand-alone Audix (later Intuity Audix) system at a reduced price.

During the early 1990s VMSs were redesigned to support integrated messaging applications with e-mail servers. The concept of a UMS designed to support voice and e-mail messaging, with both message mediums sharing a common directory and storage system, was also introduced in the early 1990s. Although demand for the enhanced messaging system designs has been limited to date, there are many productivity and cost benefits attributable to using one mailbox for all types of messages and having a single interface to the mailbox from either a telephone or PC client.

Recognizing the competitive advantage of bundling messaging applications within the PBX system, several recent start-up companies with PBX client/server designs, such as Altigen and NBX (since acquired by 3Com), integrated a UMS application running off the main system server that also provided basic PBX communications features and functions. Recently, Avaya integrated the capabilities of a full-function Intuity Audix system into the main call processing board of its small Definity One PBX system and included the Intuity Integrated Messaging appli- cation on the same board. The Altigen, 3Com, and Avaya PBX systems with the bundled messaging capabilities are designed for small/intermediate customer line size requirements, and the message storage capacities and access ports are limited. PBX systems designed for large and very large customer port requirements would not be able to integrate the messaging application into the main common control complex without affecting the basic communications responsibilities of the system. Dedicated messaging application servers will likely be the optimal solution for higher-end PBX customers, even when IP-PBX client/server system designs become standard by the end of this decade.


Figure 1: Avaya speech access with unified messenger architecture.

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