Departments that manage large enterprise telephony and or e-mail systems are experts in supporting the directives of managers who set up the process of compliance for their departments.
Over time, companies have leaned towards having one group manage the risk, and then other groups managing the technology from the directives sent down by risk management.
Risk management covers a wide array of areas in companies; one in particular that addresses your article in organizations is archiving e-mail and or recording phone calls for that "quality assurance or training purposes". Each department will have its own controls that they must follow to ensure thoroughness is met when it is conducing any archiving. Therefore each department has its own procedure and matrix for their system(s) that most likely were designed by others who do not work directly in that e-mail or telephony department.
Introducing both e-mail and telephony into one group will have the effect of who is the area expert in making sure the company if following its controls. It can be foreseen, that companies will not only have to procure the “consultants” who not only setup the original groups with their perspective roles, but now will have to find a group that has the expertise and experience to re-engaged all that are involved and certify their process are meeting the guidelines.
It will ultimately depend on who is going to make the decision. One key factor is the labor factor, if you can cut your departments overall labor by a third by introducing unified messaging, it becomes a rhetorical question to the overall political question.

Regards,

Peter R. Carlson
V.P. The Suburban Group, Inc