Microsoft to make its 'presence' felt

Presence messaging technology should be all the rage this week as Microsoft and a variety of partners are set to debut products that let users integrate VoIP with instant messaging, Wi-Fi and videoconferencing applications.

At the Fall VON 2004 show in Boston, vendors including Broadsoft, Radvision and Jasomi Networks are scheduled to announce compatibility between their gear and Microsoft's Live Communications Server (LCS). That integration will let users shift on the fly between IM and VoIP connections and quickly add parties as they connect to the network. In addition to announcements with other vendors at the VON show, Microsoft is expected to add new voice capabilities to Windows Messenger.

LCS is the cornerstone of Microsoft's real-time communication and collaboration strategy. The initial emphasis on IM and presence awareness ultimately will combine with voice, video, audio conferencing and telephony through support for Session Initiation Protocol (SIP), and SIP for Instant Messaging and Presence Leveraging Extensions (SIMPLE). Microsoft Messenger uses LCS to publish presence of users and make IM and voice connections.

Presence is a collaborative technology that makes it possible for users to announce their connections to a network and see who else is connected and by what means, including VoIP. The technology also supports communication between applications and users and application-to-application integration. In a network, presence infrastructure is used to announce which applications are up, what their functions are and what types of protocols they accept. Vendors are building on this capability to bring users together to promote better communications.

High-end corporate users today make the most use of complex presence applications, observers say. For example, one Jasomi financial-services customer uses presence as part of its trading network. Traders can conduct preliminary business via text messaging and patch in a voice or video connection to complete transactions using LCS, according to Jasomi's CEO Dan Freedman. He would not name the customer.

Jasomi is scheduled to announce that its rack-mounted PeerPoint session border controllers will work with LCS to enable IP communications to cross firewalls or network address translation devices. Installed at the edge of a network, PeerPoint hardware makes it possible for multimedia traffic to cross firewalls without arduous reconfiguration of the firewalls.

Similarly, Radvision, which makes a multimedia conferencing platform, is expected to announce cooperation with Microsoft that will make it possible to use Radvision software through Windows desktops.

While it would not provide details about its announcement with Microsoft, Broadsoft says it will include a joint development agreement to presence-enable voice calls. The agreement also calls for making it possible to launch multimedia connections within any Windows application. For example, someone using Excel could launch a sharing session to collaborate on a spreadsheet with a colleague.

Broadsoft would integrate its suite of PBX, IP Centrex and collaborative conferencing software with LCS. Such integration would let businesses tap the collaboration suite by buying it or by buying it as part of a service hosted in a carrier network.

IBM has integrated presence in Lotus Notes, but its use is in the early phases, the company says.