Tracking the Elusive "IP Application" (cont'd)

Presence and Mobility
Playing further on the SAN theme, network-accessible data enables both presence and mobility in IP. In a simple example, a person connected to a WiFi hotspot, working on a document accessed from a SAN, communicating with a colleague via instant messenger (IM) is expressing both mobility and presence. The mobility comes in being able to access “home” services – i.e. the SAN – from any IP connection, regardless of geography. Presence is represented in IM, where the user "appears" to others on the network when he or she is “present.”

Mobility and presence are critical capabilities because people are on the move and need to be able to communicate and remain highly productive wherever they go. People that work for large corporations are mobile, not just the jetsetters, but those that go from meeting to meeting or room to room. Hospitals, for example, are an extreme case where people work in a confined space, but never stay in one place for very long. Though this opens the door to many service opportunities, the first and most obvious is instant messaging.

Instant Messaging
Radicati Group estimates that 85 percent of all companies worldwide use instant messaging in some form. The research firm says that as many as 125 million people use unsecured IM services from AOL, Yahoo and others – up from 100 million just nine months ago. Corporate employees often use these services for anytime, anywhere communication with colleagues. But IM presents security vulnerabilities and can be a gateway for hackers to break into corporate networks and steal information or identity.

Corporations want and need IM, but it needs to be the kind of bullet proof, secure service for which they'd typically turn to a telco. AOL is trying to step into that role now, competing with WebEx, and is rolling out a business service that includes AOL Instant Messenger (AIM), online meeting functions and voice conferencing. AOL estimates that 15 million of its 36 million AIM users access the service for work purposes. Both IBM with Lotus Notes and Microsoft have also added secure IM infrastructure to their corporate offerings in response to business demand.

Collaboration
Presence and mobility will take users beyond IM as broadband IP connections become more easily accessible. One example of this is found today in collaboration tools that give colleagues working on projects their own virtual workspace. This space is used to share files and comes with functions like whiteboarding, chat, application sharing, voice conferencing and web presenting. These capabilities are familiar to those in software development and project management, but they have now entered the mainstream. Early adopters are taking this one step further and rolling out video portals that deliver education, training, corporate news and even work-related entertainment all over IP.

In an ideal sense, people will move from meeting to meeting, office to office, and city to city and always have complete access to resources, information and voice calls. Mobility and presence are inherent to VoIP – in certain architectures – so that users should be able to tap into an IP connection anywhere and have calls routed to that location. Combined with collaboration tools, the foundation is set for an enterprise workforce that is enabled for mobility and not constrained by it – and enterprises consider that an advantage.

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