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It's amusing to imagine that the 16 million or so salmon bred annually by Cooke Aquaculture Inc. of Blacks Harbour, N.B., call home every day to talk about the weather. But that is closer to truth than fantasy.

The family-run Cooke fish hatchery has more than 100 pens, 11 freshwater hatcheries and three processing plants in Newfoundland and Labrador, New Brunswick, Prince Edward Island and Maine. And the precise temperature of the water in every pen is important - if the water gets too cold, salmon die. Cooke's 1,300 employees must know immediately, because day-after temperature readings just aren't fast enough.

So Cooke has turned to unified communications. The latest word in tech, unified communications blends familiar technologies - instant messaging, e-mail, voice mail, short message services, Web conferencing, desktop and advanced business applications, fax, audio, video, white-boarding, cellphones and VOIP - into a single system.

Cooke's setup, designed by Cisco Systems Canada Co., connects temperature sensors installed in the salmon pens to a system that sends data by telephone. The readings are then pumped into the company's computers and processed. It's so fast, it allows the hatchery employees to react to changes almost immediately.

In physical terms, unified communications, sometimes referred to simply as UC, is a separate server that runs specialized software that meshes voice and data. Centralizing the services makes them easy to administer and, more important, secure.

Analysts believe the market for unified communications is on the verge of exploding. According to WinterGreen Research, the market reached $1.3-billion (U.S.) in 2006 and is expected to grow 8 per cent in 2007, 15 per cent this year and 30 per cent in 2009. By then, forecasts Synergy Research Group, the global enterprise Internet protocol telephony market will generate more than $10-billion in sales.

Recognizing the growth potential, several traditional and not-so-traditional players have launched unified communications products and have started eating into Cisco Systems Inc.'s 35-per-cent market share.

Microsoft Corp. announced a partnership with Nortel Networks in 2006 with the aim of cutting into Cisco's lead, and last fall unveiled new UC products. Natural allies, Microsoft provides the software - its leading Office suite and other applications - to combine with Nortel's hardware and networking expertise. The system lets workers see who's online and then enables them to quickly and easily connect with each other over a phone, via video conference, instant message or e-mail - all from within common programs like Microsoft Outlook or Word.

The communications climate has changed everywhere, says Tony Rybczynski, head of global enterprise strategic marketing at Nortel. A lot of that has to do with the new breed of employee making their way into the workplace. These days, for example, "a student starting work doesn't expect to sit down at a desk with a black phone on it. They live in a hyperlinked world. They're very connected."

One of the more imaginative uses for unified communications has been conceived by Paul Cross, chief executive officer of Vancouver-based OYCO.com, which he says started out as "Oi! Come Over here" but settled for the more sober "Organize Your Communications Online."

Mr. Cross says his company already has a million subscribers to his system, but has been talking to professional sports leagues, which have shown interest in his idea of using unified communications as a basis for extending team websites.

This includes things like offering fans e-mail addresses using the names of their favourite teams, setting up Web conferencing among fans who are simultaneously watching a game and getting the fans on the team's mailing list, which would greatly simplify the process of running a website. The concept is like an online version of a loyalty card.

"It puts the fan on a pedestal," Mr. Cross says.

However, the classic organization that benefits from unified communications is one that is dispersed and on the move. One such group is the Ontario Association of Community Care Access Centres, which administers 14 local organizations that provide home and community services, and 250 secondary offices. That makes for between 7,000 and 8,000 highly mobile people, who present a nightmare scenario if even just a few of them are needed for a meeting.

Ken Sutcliffe, OACCAC director of IT services, said the organization had used Microsoft's NetMeeting, which helped a little, but it required every worker to have a laptop computer and either a wireless card or a cellphone. Then he got an integrated communications system from Microsoft.

"Where it really kicks in," he says, "is that now we have a range of communications applications, not just the laptop."