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.
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.
For its part, Microsoft plans to introduce the next LCS 2005 client, which is slated to ship in December. The client – code-named Istanbul – is the follow-up to Windows Messenger 5.0 and is expected to add voice capabilities including taking voice calls routed by PBXs and softswitches. It also will support internal routing of calls via Active Directory.
“[Today] you can link voice calls in to people within your organization that are listed in Active Directory, but you can’t do it externally,” says a source close to Microsoft, who asked not to be identified. The client will use presence support in LCS to find other voice-enabled end users who are online, the source says. “Microsoft is taking some baby steps with its direction and providing a cheap way to make internal voice calls. Microsoft is trying to build up trust as a voice provider. People are not going to be throwing out their Avaya or Lucent PBXs to go with Microsoft for voice.”
What is more likely, says Melanie Turek, an analyst with Nemertes Research, is Microsoft will try for compatibility with IP voice gear and focus on blending voice with applications. “They will go to telephony vendors for voice and integrate with LCS for application-based presence,” she says. “I’m not convinced they have an easy road ahead of them.”
That’s because telephony vendors are already supporting presence-based conferencing, she says.
Ericsson, for instance, is expected to announce at VON that its IP Multimedia Subsystem conferencing software will make IM, VoIP and videoconferencing available to anyone from any location. Similarly, Siemens has been selling its HiPath OpenScape collaboration suite based on LCS since last year, and is said to have announcements about it at VON that it would not reveal.
Businesses look forward to presence capabilities because they can save on costs by running all forms of communications over the same network. Users will become more productive because they will be more accessible on a wide variety of devices, says John Streck, director of networking research and development at North Carolina State University, who is moderating “The Killer App: Using Presence and Instant Messaging” on Wednesday at VON.
“Presence adds a lot of value because it adds context to an end user’s network identity, and lets you optimally deliver data to an [end user],” Streck says.
Despite all the chatter about presence, industry observers say wide adoption of the technology is still years off. “[Presence] is in the same situation MPLS was four years ago,” says Zeus Kerravala, an analyst with The Yankee Group. “There’s lots of promise, but a limit to what it can do in an open, multi-vendor environment.”
Turek agrees. “It’s a lot like VoIP in that it took a while for IT executives to understand the real value of it,” she says. “They say, ‘I can see the value, but I can’t measure it and I have other priorities right now.'”
According to an IDC study this year of 492 IT executives, only 156 used IP PBXs. Of those, 7% said they are using the IP voice gear with IM and presence. “That is a significant finding that presence is not taking off yet,” says Paul Strauss, an analyst with IDC who conducted the research.
