A unified messaging system on the Internet

Messaging is an essential aspect of human communication and with the advance in technology and the merging technologies in telecommunications and computers, unified messaging has become very popular. Products that can unify email, voice mail and facsimile are reaching the market. These products will allow users to save time and money and provide them with an efficient way to manage different forms of information. This paper proposes a unified messaging system, UniMail, which is hosted on a PC platform. Access by client is primarily via the web browser with alternative access to voice messages, emails and fax messages by the telephone. A comparison between UniMail and existing unified messaging solutions is also made to provide an insight into the relative strengths of this new system. q 2001 Elsevier Science B.V. All rights reserved.