The term “unified communications” arose in the mid-1990s, when messaging and real-time communications began to combine. In 1993, ThinkRite (VoiceRite) developed the unified messaging system, POET, for IBM’s internal use. It was installed in 55 IBM US Branch Offices for 54,000 employees. It integrated with IBM OfficeVision/VM (PROFS) and provided IBMers with one phone number for voicemail, fax, alphanumeric paging and follow-me. POET was in use until 2000.[5] In the late 1990s, a New Zealand-based organization called IPFX developed a commercially available presence product, which let users see the location of colleagues, make decisions on how to contact them, and define how their messages were handled based on their own presence. The first full-featured converged telephony/UC offering was the Nortel Succession MX (Multimedia eXchange) produc which later became known as Nortel Multimedia Communications Server (MCS 5100)
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