Welcome! To the first of a series of articles, which will address the impact of IP telephony on the Enterprise. In order to mix up both the technology and business aspects, the articles are a collaboration between Jack Jachner (Senior Director with the CTO office) and Chris Vuillaume (VP Product Marketing with enterprise products) at Alcatel. As the first contribution, it is fitting to focus the emergence of Presence, as it is a key differentiator of the new user-centric communication.

The communication interface that enterprise workers use daily has changed regularly over the last century. Some of these changes, such as Dial Tone replacing the switchboard operator, then Dual Tone Multi-Frequency (DTMF) dialing for telephones, and the World Wide Web (WWW) for the Internet, have generated entire new businesses and driven fundamental changes in the way individuals behave. The latest evolution is the emergence of Presence, which has similar potential to instigate change and create new business opportunities.

Presence has been made popular by teenagers using Instant Messaging (IM). One key reason for IM’s success is that it displays the presence of “buddies,” as real-time information on the relationship of a user (a buddy, a colleague) to one or more devices and/or networks (on-line, off-line, busy, and the like).

Even this simple form of presence introduces a more interactive and less formal approach to communication (even when compared to e-mail). Despite its appeal, the acceptance of presence, IM, and all potential Presence-based applications in enterprises depends on key issues being resolved, such as ease of use, security, and accuracy.

Two concurrent approaches are being adopted to develop presence. One is to combine presence information from voice and computer communication tools. This has started, for example in Instant Collaboration systems and with standardized connectors to provide Presence from existing PBX systems.The other is the extension to Rich Presence, which is the aggregation of presence from many sources (devices, applications, telecom domains) and the intelligent management of user and enterprise preferences.
Together with the integration of business applications (ERP, CRM...etc.), these approaches will expand users’ communication potential and broaden the range of instant decisions they can make.

The increasing number of geographically distributed teams that need to work together, and an increasing range of available communication tools has created business opportunities for collaboration, that is, for groups of users to communicate on-line and share information, create and edit documents, etc. Today, on-line collaboration is the fastest growing sector of communication in both numbers of users and numbers of minutes. However, the growth in communication media and supporting devices is creating communication chaos for the user. Better integration of media and devices is therefore required: presence will play a central role in this unification.

Rich presence offers opportunities and raises issues for the users and managers in an enterprise. On the positive side, it provides users with accurate real-time information about their contacts. It also enables them to change more readily to the most suitable communication mode and reduces communication overload.

Expected benefits for the enterprise are increased employee productivity (less time lost in missed interactions) and increased group productivity (groups can instantly generate the information or make the decision required for the continuity of a business process).

However, presence raises users’ concerns about ease of use (“I do not want to learn to use a new set of complex tools”), privacy (“I do not want to be under permanent scrutiny”) and time management (“I do not want to be invaded by unsolicited interactions”). There are concerns about security for the enterprise (company information must remain confidential) and about enterprise policy enforcement (employee behavior must comply with company rules). There is also a need to bridge unrelated “silos” of presence coming from various sources. All these concerns are addressed by the emergence of a rich presence infrastructure.

This infrastructure must support basic key services, such as transparency, availability, scalability, and serviceability, which are already offered by the current stand-alone solutions, which now need to be integrated.

The business impact of Presence will be profound over the next five years. For the enterprise user, it will be the shift from device specific to user centric communication, better team collaboration and less time spent recording and retrieving messages. For the enterprise, it is quicker responsiveness to customers and improved reachability of high-value staff, translating to competitive advantage. For the IT manager, it will mean deploying a communication infrastructure with open standard interfaces, and the integration of enterprise communication tools into a cohesive whole. For the vendor community, it represents a shift from stand-alone products to integrated solutions that address the entire range of user centric communication needs.

The promise of Presence will be realized when you never again need to record a message instead of reaching the desired person — with a display of their current presence, you can time your interaction to be successful. Admittedly, much needs to be done, but the goal is enticing. IT