It appears as though more of the industry is waking up to Presence Being the Killer App. With Jabber Inc. being a leader in this space. Jabber, Inc., which develops real-time communication server platforms for developing IM and presence-enabled applications, is fashioning its XCP platform into an application server of sorts not only for presence, but also for messaging, routing and XML-application development. In September, it will release a publish-and-subscribe technology called Information Broker for pushing content out to users.
Interesting too, is the increase in adoption of Enterprise IM (EIM) and consequent integration of presence in business applications. A recent Osterman Research study shows 44% of companies use IM with business applications, up from 21% just three years ago. Furthermore, 34% of users have standardized on an internally run IM platform, up from 24% just two years ago.
Jabber Inc. is has announced new versions of its commercial Jabber server and client.
Jabber XCP 4.0 is the first commercial server to be fully compliant with the Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF)-approved Extensible Messaging and Presence Protocol (XMPP) for messaging and presence.
Other interesting features are SASL server to server authentication, and further advances in exposing a SOAP interface to presence information. Instant Messaging plus Web Services, yumm.
A brand new Jabber Messenger Client
A Jabber inc. product manager spoke with me a while back about the completely rewritten Jabber Messenger client 3.0. While still only built for Windows, it has the potential to be a universal client down the road, because it is written in Java (the Windows version is just a native java compile).
The complete rewrite included a redesign toward a more usable interface. They have gone with a increasingly popular tabbed interface, making it much more managable to handle several conversations at once. You can undock specific tabs however, to seperate windows if you desire. It appears to be highly flexible and will suit users better in the long term. Other exciting features include custom presence, allowing you to hide yourself from individual users or mark yourself away selectively. I think most importantly they have a much more comprehensive approach to text conferencing, allowing the bookmarking of rooms and many more filtering and notification features.
Apparently there is a change from the 2.7 Jabber Messenger client in the handling of custom content tabs.
We have introduced the concept of "navigator" tabs that represent roster, Text Conference rooms, Community Groups, Gateways and Dynamic Content.
Note: We will loose our custom Disney tabs at this point, the ABC news and ESPN sports tabs will go away. However, we could, I imagine, syndicate via html a variety of resources with the new design. We will need to spend some time researching these upgrades and probably institute a small project to determine how to communicate with our users, as the design change is significant.
The new Jabber Inc. releases were also covered on InternetWeek.
A series of high profile vendors have been adopting XMPP technologies, which could significantly increase the exposure of Jabber.
Apple published that its Mac OS X 10.4 Server includes a Jabber based iChat server. More information and screenshots about its inclusion in Tiger can be found in this Apple Insider Article.
There is speculation that google will follow up its gmail service with a Jabber/XMPP based instant messaging service. This could be a significant blip on a continuing volatile Enterprise IM market timeline.
Jive Software has a new proposed standards based approach to customer support via Jabber Instant Messaging.
In an effort to standardize live support functionality using the XMPP protocol, Jive Software has submitted a Jabber Enhancement Proposal (JEP) to the Jabber Software Foundation. The JEP introduces the concept of a "workgroup," which provides a mechanism to manage queues of users and route them to available agents. The JEP is currently proceeding through the JSF's standards process and will undergo rigorous cross-area review before being finalized as a JSF-approved extension to XMPP.
Lastly, a little tidbit about PDA's and RSS. The developer of Chatopus, a PalmOS based Jabber client, wrote an article on how to receive RSS news updates via Jabber. An interesting combination of technologies. I think Pub Sub (publish-subscribe) technologies are at a critical intersect with presence.
Keep watching, the real time internet emerges.
