What is Mobile Presence?

By Richard Watson, Director of Product Management

Presence has become an important application to businesses today because it helps mobile-colleagues stay apprised of one another’s availability. Using Presence to broadcast and read Status Updates (such as available by phone, text or currently on the phone), individuals can make more intelligent communication choices and eliminate time wasted making and/or returning missed-calls. Whether they are in the office or on the road, Presence ensures that voice or text-based conversations will be processed in the most efficient manner. And when combined with microblogging (your Status Update message), Presence is elevated to the level of “mobile social networking” that provides the ability to broadcast specifics about an individual. For example an individual’s Presence may show “available by text” and his micro-blog Status Update could say “in a customer meeting until 2:00 pm”. Together Presence and microblogging broadcasting say it all — how to best reach an individual and a personal message that indicates where they are and/or how long they will be unavailable.

• Needs to broadcast ALL scenarios: On voice and text; On voice only; On text only; Not available (a.k.a. Do Not Disturb); or On the Phone. Note: Available/Unavailable is not sufficient; without these additional functions, there is no indication of a missed voice or text message.

• Needs to be displayed as an icon on the smartphone client GUI. Note: Without a client GUI display, the end user is often forced to manually peruse a PC-based contact list.

• Needs to enable individuals to directly call, email or send mobile IM straight from the smartphone client GUI. Note: Forcing end users to toggle between smartphone and PC or deskphone to complete communication is inefficient and clumsy.

• Needs Twitter-like option for writing a customized Status Update message (i.e., working at home, in a meeting, at the airport, running late, on a coffee break at Starbucks, etc.) to supplement the Presence status state. Note: Pairing a Status Update message that tells “how” you’re available with a mobile Presence icon that broadcasts “if” you’re available means that fewer calls will be missed, less time will be wasted listening to voicemail and returning missed calls, and fewer meetings will be interrupted by a voice call when a simple IM will do the trick.

• Needs to be federated in order to display entire corporate contact list and individual’s availability. Note: Avoids the manual task of checking each “buddy’s” online/offline status.

• Needs to combine forces with other UC applications, including IM and Visual Voicemail. Note: Without complementary UC applications, it is nearly impossible to achieve the goal of efficiently completing the communication cycle.

(source: http://hdvoice.tmcnet.com/topics/unified-communications/articles/54033-what-mobile-presence.htm)