Other executives have not been so quick to jump on the SIP bandwagon, and they aren't ready to extend UM capability to thousands of users. "We have not found it necessary to make a major move to SIP," says Howie Gold, vice president of IT at House of Blues Concerts Canada (HOB) in Toronto.

HOB organizes shows across Canada -- not only in House of Blues nightclubs but also in major venues such as Calgary's Pengrowth Saddledome arena -- and its traveling production and sales crews use an array of personal communications devices.

"We saw as our benefits from unified messaging things like reduced cell phone usage, because people would not have to call in and check messages," says Gold. "It was also a potential single point of contact for faxes and e-mails." Yet because UM options on voice-mail replacement systems cost about US$100 extra per seat, HOB didn't want to blanket the organization with those features.

Instead, a small subset of HOB personnel are offered UM capabilities extended as options on the IP PBX the concert promoter purchased several years ago. HOB has installed Business Communications Manager (BCM) from Brampton, Ontario-based Nortel. BCM doesn't incorporate SIP, but HOB doesn't need SIP, because its communications infrastructure is built entirely on Nortel equipment. "We are keeping an eye on SIP, because we do think it could ultimately help us lower our bandwidth requirements," Gold says.

While keeping one eye on SIP, HOB officials are focused on the IT budget. "Unified messaging is a bonus for us because it helps us stay far more connected. But it can be hard to justify to the accountants a $15,000 expenditure that provides us with an icon that says you have a new message," says Gold.