Collaboration's Killer App - Presence Awareness

Presence awareness (PA) is the killer app for online collaboration – not for just linking people to people, but also people to applications and applications to applications.

Until recently, PA has been defined principally as the ability of an intelligent agent (computer or device) to determine an object's location and availability within a given geographical area. For example, Toshiba’s recently released Media Communication System MasterServer uses PA functionality to enable VOIP on Wi-Fi networks.

The widespread adoption of Instant Messaging – the most popular collaboration tool – signals the role PA will assume as the backbone to online collaboration tools powered by identity management. Most IM applications are built using the SIP protocol (HTML for real-time communications), the PA standard in use by Microsoft, IBM, AOL, Cisco, and others. SIP allows applications and people to know if others are online and available.

Microsoft recently released the Real-time Communications Server (RTCS) – formerly code named Greenwich– which manages all real-time IP-based communications within an enterprise. In time, this server will support a bundle of collaboration applications, including Microsoft’s PlaceWare, Messenger, and Groove Workspace. Seimens just launched OpenScape, which uses RTCS to insert extra panes into users’ Microsoft Outlook interface, delivering presence information about colleagues. The extra panes notify if others are answering e-mails, traveling, or available by cell phone.

Collaboration tools which aren’t SIP-enabled may not have a future. And those that don’t interoperate with the Real-time Communications Server may not make it onto the shortlist of enterprise IT administrators who advocate the use MS Exchange, Outlook and/or SharePoint to their users.

- Alex Gault