Every morning from New York to London to Tokyo, people walk into their office buildings, grab a cup of tea or coffee, and head to their office. They then log into their e-mail to check their mail messages. Afterwards they pick up their phones and call into their voicemail. Finally they might run down the hall to the fax machine to check for faxes. They repeat these steps over and over throughout their day, even transcribing a voicemail into e-mail or reading a fax into a colleague's voicemail.

It's been this way for decades—three different systems to manage three different types of communications, and three different sets of tools to access them. Microsoft Outlook is for e-mail, phones are for voicemail, fax machines are for faxes. But why does it have to be this way? The environment in which we work is not what it was five or ten years ago, so why should the way we deal with messaging and collaboration be the same? Why can't we get both our voicemail and faxes in our inbox? We can use a phone to access voicemail, but why can't we call in and get our e-mail messages? Why are communications separate rather than integrated?