While speaking with Polycom the other day about its recently released Converged Management Application, I learned it includes a desktop client that presents end users with the familiar "buddy list" interface so common to unified communications solutions these days. Status changes on the presence and availability of coworkers are automatically pushed out, letting end users determine who is or is not available for a video session or a text chat. As far as I know this is Polycom's first flirt with presence and availability of the unified communications variety. With Polycom's CMA Desktop app, launching a video conference becomes as simple as clicking to call.
While speaking with Polycom the other day about its recently released Converged Management Application, I learned it includes a desktop client that presents end users with the familiar "buddy list" interface so common to unified communications solutions these days. Status changes on the presence and availability of coworkers are automatically pushed out, letting end users determine who is or is not available for a video session or a text chat. As far as I know this is Polycom's first flirt with presence and availability of the unified communications variety. With Polycom's CMA Desktop app, launching a video conference becomes as simple as clicking to call.It is developments like this that give me the impression that telephony presence integrated with secure instant messaging services will become increasingly pervasive business communications tools. These unified communications capabilities are being baked into so many different types of solutions - PBX softphones, contact center agent interfaces, collaboration software tools, corporate-grade IM clients - that it's going to be impossible for buyers to ignore them. Or at least ignore them to the extent that they have in the five or so years since the first unified communications platforms were first formally introduced.
But with vendors baking in telephony, video, and IM presence in so many different types of products, there's the danger of businesses finding many pockets of unrelated, non-interoperable presence applications running in their network. CMA Desktop, for example, aggregates presence information only from video conferencing devices that can register to Polycom CMA 4000/5000 servers. There are plans to integrate with non-Polycom devices and applications, but this could be complicated by the fact that CMA Desktop uses XMPP rather than SIP/SIMPLE to deliver the presence capabilities.
I honestly don't mean to pick just on Polycom here. Interoperability of the telephony and IM presence software currently available for use in businesses remains spotty at best. Some PBX vendors' telephony presence engines integrate with Microsoft Live Communications Server 2005, but not Office Communications Server 2007. For other PBX vendors, it's the other way around. IBM Sametime integration is sometimes available or on the horizon, but often not with the same set of telephony features available as integration with the Microsoft platforms. And integration with rival PBX vendors' telephony presence applications? Foggetaboutit!
Until there is true federation among all these wonderfully open, standards-compliant, but mysteriously non-interoperable presence applications, it is likely that enterprises will continue to be plagued by pockets of presence scattered throughout their networks.
