In the litigious world we live in, deploying a unified communications platform in your enterprise could cause more headaches than you bargained for.

The fact is, if you digitize and archive your voice mails, especially on your e-mail server, you are obligated to save them as you would any other relevant electronic document.

Unified messaging -- strictly speaking, a subset of unified communications -- integrates two or three of the so-called store-and-forward technologies: e-mail, fax, and voice mail. The heart of the problem, according to Bernard Elliot, an analyst at Gartner, is the technology behind the creation of a common UI, as there are a number of ways on the back end to design a single UI for e-mail and voice mail on the front end.

Applied Voice & Speech Technologies (AVST), for example, offers four configurations: server, client, secure, and simplified. All unified communications vendors give you one or more of these options.

AVST’s server configuration stores all messages in the e-mail server. Client keeps voice, fax, and e-mail separate, with unification being performed on the client itself. Secure says, “I do not want voice to ever touch e-mail,” so it keeps the three types of messages separate, offering a Web portal for access. Simplified just sends users an e-mail to notify them of a voice message.

Microsoft stores both voice and e-mail messages on Exchange. Cisco gives the customer two choices. Cisco Unity puts everything on one platform; Unity Connection keeps platforms separate.

Now we come to the problem of electronic discovery.

For the most part, voice mail servers expunge voice mails after two weeks, some after 30 days. Unless you are in the financial services industry, you are not required to maintain voice mails beyond that, according to Trent Dickey, an IP (intellectual property) specialist at the law firm Sills Cummis Epstein & Gross.

However, if your voice mail is archived along with your e-mail, as is the case with Exchange or Unity, the Federal Rules for Civil Procedure considers those voice mails to be documents subject to e-discovery regulations in the event of a lawsuit, says Howard Susser, an attorney and partner in the IP department at Burns & Levinson. Dickey agrees.

Going forward, even if old e-mails were expunged on a regular basis, you may be obligated to save new voice mails that are relevant to an ongoing dispute, Dickey says.

With this in mind, it is important to heed the advice of Gartner's Elliot.

"You have to be careful about the way you deploy unified messaging," Elliot tells me.

If you don't care, you can go to a single store, but if you do, look at client-side integration with completely separate stores. Although it looks like your communications are unified, on the back end they are separate. Yet another approach is a separate-but-synchronized methodology, where there are separate folders but the index is cross-tabulated. Finally, there is a URL-pointer system that directs you to the separate audio file.

Even if you unify voice mail on a different server, if you archive them they are like any other e-document.

If you anticipate a lawsuit, the voice mail must be put on litigation hold. Whereas e-mail can be easily searched for keywords, it is more difficult with voice mail. Someone might have to listen to them all.

New technology always comes with a new set of issues. Unified communications is no different.