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Towards a Universal Inbox
G5 Messaging Protocol integrates and enhances
fax, e-mail, Internet voice

Researched by IDM Staff.

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Everyone reliant on electronic messaging - in particular, fax and e-mail - has wished for a system that combines the best elements of traditional media while unifying and enhancing them. Who hasn't experienced the frustration of receiving a fax, only to have to re-type it or tediously correct the results of an optical character recognition (OCR) program? Ever wondered whether your e-mail reached its destination? Have you ever had a need to send voice or video data, but found that current systems are unreliable when transmitting very large binary files?

These problems arise from limitations in both the the functionality aand interoperability of standards for electronic media. Because they require broad cross-industry consensus, efforts to remedy this situation have progressed glacially. Now, in mid-1998, a consortium of multimedia vendors called The G5 Messaging Forum is putting the finishing touches on a promising message integration framework: the G5 Messaging Protocol.

G5 is designed to be easy to use, to integrate seamlessly with fax and Internet e-mail and to provide legally compliant and secure electronic messaging. Largely through the use of existing standards (See sidebar, "G5 In Practice: A Technical Summary"), G5 aims to preserve positive aspects of extant transmission methods, enhance them with additional features and eliminate negative ones.

The protocol has been designed to interoperate with Group 3 fax, Internet e-mail, intranet and proprietary LAN e-mail. To provide immediate connectivity with the existing user base of inter-company message protocols, G5 Messaging is designed with a fall-back to Group 3 fax and Internet e-mail as core capabilities. This means that, with a single keystroke, a message may be sent to multiple recipients using any mix of Group 3 fax, Internet e-mail and full G5 Messaging.

Origins

In 1996, major players from both the vendor and user communities in the messaging industry came together as the G5 Messaging Forum. The Forum's 12 members account in aggreagate for over 30 per cent of inter-company messaging solutions world-wide. Members include Symantec Delrina, Matsushita, NatWest Bank, Cheyenne Software, Xerox, Philips, Gammalink, Equisys, Brooktrout Technology, Netstore, Rockwell and 5th Generation Messaging.

Membership in the G5 Messaging Forum remains open to any organization with an interest in the future of integrated multimedia messaging. The Forum is also active in its support of the Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF) and works closely with such bodies as the ITU, WEMA, the European Commission, MMTA and AIIM International.

The draft specification for a G5 messaging service - the Interoperability Agreement - was published on the Internet as an open discussion document in September 1997. This prompted a world-wide response and was followed by developer workshops in Europe, Japan and the USA.

Version 1.0 of the G5 Messaging specification is available now on the Web at www.group5forum.org.

According to a Forum release, vendors are already planning G5 Messaging products for launch during Q4 1998. The take-up of G5 Messaging has been very rapid and the Forum expects to announce substantial committed supply volumes of G5 Messaging products in 1999.

Corporate Cost Savings

More impressive even than its feature set are the potential savings G5 Messaging makes possible. Fax currently accounts for 40 per cent of large corporations' communication spending. G5 Messaging reduces these costs by:

• Sending text files when needed - Using the Internet - Using internal networks
• This will greatly reduce the $17 million average spend of Fortune 500 companies.
• Moreover, corporate handling costs are estimated by various studies at between 100 and 200 times transmission costs. G5 Messaging attacks this huge overhead in three ways:
  1. Carrying essential indexing/document control information with the Message, allowing automatic electronic filing both ends;
  2. Automating costly, time consuming activities, e.g. automatic directory calling;
  3. Providing for the first time a solution where the received electronic document is the original and therefore is the archived copy.

Security and Legality

Interoperability is the "quick hit" benefit of G5 Messaging, but the protocol adds value through important functional enhancements as well. For instance, G5 provides an extremely secure messaging environment and allows for archiving of messages in a local and/or remote archive. The archived message store may be operated in compliance with codes of practice which provide a legally admissible record of the message and its delivery to the intended recipient.

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