Cisco’s recent move to acquire Dynamicsoft highlights the emerging importance of presence.
Cisco‘s recent move to acquire Dynamicsoft highlights the emerging importance of presence. In addition to softswitch capabilities, Cisco reportedly was interested in Dynamicsoft’s presence engine, which integrates multiple sources of presence (mobile/GSM, Session Initiation Protocol, Simple Object Access Protocol, calendaring and others) to let service providers offer presence-based solutions.
A few leading-edge companies are talking about the concept of a presence aggregator or presence clearinghouse: a single entity that will capture multiple sources of presence information, including geography (GPS, GSM), availability and context (who’s logged on to or using particular applications).
A handful of enterprise organizations have embraced presence and are documenting clear business benefits. Over the next 12 months, these early adopters will seek to expand that value by extending presence to select outsiders, and embedding it within more applications and devices. As that happens, the market for presence aggregators will heat up.
I’ve defined presence in some of my earlier columns, but here are the more common questions I’m asked:
Isn’t presence the same thing as instant messaging?
No. IM uses presence data, but presence is a broader concept than IM. It’s a little like equating your BlackBerry with e-mail. The BlackBerry’s merely the reader; e-mail includes the client software, the server and a common communications protocol.
But I don’t want the entire world knowing where I am and what I’m doing every minute of every day. Isn’t that an invasion of privacy?
Not if it’s managed effectively. A salesperson might elect to be as available as possible to his key clients, while an engineer might list herself as “unavailable” to everyone but her programming team – and communicate with them only via IM or e-mail.
Does presence primarily apply to large IT organizations? Where does the concept of a presence carrier come in?
Interestingly, the very concept of presence was pioneered by Bell Labs researchers who had the key insight that true communications wasn’t about locating somebody’s phone, it was about locating them. AOL is one of the early promoters of presence clearinghouses.
What about Microsoft? Doesn’t it already own the presence applications market?
Microsoft is certainly making a concerted push toward presence with its Live Communications Server. But companies investing heavily in presence applications range from well-capitalized heavy hitters (IBM, Oracle, Cisco, Nortel, Avaya) to aggressive start-ups (Facetime, IMlogic, Akonix, Parlano). It’s far too early to crown Microsoft the undisputed ruler.
The concept of presence is still futuristic, and the notion of presence aggregators or clearinghouses is still at least three to five years off. But a good example for how presence information is likely to evolve is the development of the converged cell phone/e-mail-reader/PDA. Five years ago, cell phones and PDAs were different devices entirely, and reading e-mail required a PC or terminal. Now 67% of IT participants in a recent Nemertes benchmark say their users rely on mobile devices to read e-mail – and a whopping 22% of users rely on cell phones.
Watch for similar convergence in the presence arena.
