Hi All, Here is an interesting article on IM Interoperablity by Neil
Sengupta of US Computing, Inc. For details visit
http://kellster.com/IMinteroperability.asp
Amar
Instant Messaging – The Hope Of Interoperability
Neil Sengupta, US Computing, Inc.
It is very clear that Instant Messaging has emerged as a significantly
popular option when it comes to Internet Communication technologies. So far
IM has been brought to the individual consumers by only a few companies –
AOL, Yahoo, MSN, ICQ etc. It is completely understandable that these
companies have invested very early in the IM market and therefore feel a
justified need to protect their consumer base from competitors. At the same
time there is a rapidly developing need and interest among the user
community to be able to IM across multiple vendor platforms. This document
presents an easy (hopefully) proposal through which other companies could
offer IM services that are interoperable with the existing popular systems
and at the same time enable the existing IM services to maintain their
relationship with the end user. Through out this document the terms
“established IM vendors”, “established IM platforms” etc. will be used to
collectively refer to the existing popular IM providers – AOL, ICQ, MSN and
Yahoo.
Need for Interoperability
>From the IM user perspective there is no denying that interoperability is a
strongly desired feature. We in the industry want to ensure that consumers
are well aware of our branding while they use our services. However people
think in terms of people rather than in terms of Vendors and Systems.
An easy testimonial to this is the fact that people are unwilling to change
their IM systems since they already have large buddy lists on that system.
Lack of interoperability keeps them shut away from others in their social
circle.
If I use a long distance provider A and I have a friend in California that
uses a log distance provider B – I can still pick up the phone and call my
buddy. From a consumer’s perspective this should be possible with Instant
Messaging – just as it is with email. We may use different email providers
but we can still exchange email.
Past and Ongoing Efforts
There are several ongoing efforts at IM interoperability. However, nearly
all of them have been met with strong resistance from the established IM
vendors. This has been primarily due to the need for users to abandon an
existing established IM client for a client that supports interoperability.
The established vendor has responded by blocking entry from external clients
into their servers. This move is understandably motivated by a need for the
IM vendors to protect themselves from losing their touch-point or desktop
relationship with the end user.
Majority of the interoperability efforts such as those by Odigo, Trillian
etc. have been client based. This means that the interoperable client uses a
client proxy to connect to an external IM platform. As a result the user is
forced to switch clients if they want interoperability.
An additional issue with interoperability efforts has been has been that
such clients require users to provide other established IM system login
names and passwords. Needless to say that this raises concerns on the side
of the established providers since now their system login information is
entered by users into a “foreign” application.
The Jabber Organization proposes a server-based interoperability. This
definitely deserves attention. The Jabber proposal specifies an IM
user-addressing scheme very similar to Email.
The issue thus far with the Jabber effort has been in getting the
established IM vendors to buy into Jabber concept. The existing major
players do not support Jabber compatibility. Jabber gets around this by
building client proxies (referred to as Transports) which run on the Jabber
server. The transport essentially emulates the native protocol of the
established IM system. So a Jabber client never connects directly to a third
party IM system. The Jabber client connects to the Jabber server. The Jabber
server then uses its Transport to connect to an established IM platform.
However none of the existing established IM platforms support Jabber. As a
result if users want to use a Jabber based system they have to use a Jabber
compatible client – and none of the established vendors want that to happen
since they lose their end user relationship. And round and round it goes.
The proposal presented below is based along the lines of server side
interoperability and “email like” IM addressing schemes, similar to what is
proposed by the Jabber organization. The proposal also provides solutions to
work around and resolve the issues that have impeded server-based
compatibility thus far.
Proposal
A safe compromise is possible if IM providers would agree to a simple
protocol that would allow users to message across platforms without having
to leave their current providers IM client.
The idea is that IM would operate very similar to Email when it comes to
user addressing. For example a Yahoo users IM id could be
[EMAIL PROTECTED] and an AOL users IM id could be [EMAIL PROTECTED] Each
user would simply use the full address to message each other from the native
Yahoo and AOL client.
Presence information could be handled by a protocol agreement such that the
servers would exchange Presence data. If romulus added [EMAIL PROTECTED] (and
remus allows this) to their buddy list then whenever remus logs into the AOL
IM server the server would notify the Yahoo IM server which in turn would
send remus’ presence to romulus. Note that romulus would still use the
native Yahoo client and remus would still use the native AOL client.
This proposal would work if all the vendors decided on a common (perhaps XML
based) simple protocol through which IM servers can exchange messages.
Vendor Advantage Protection
An IM vendor certainly does not want to lose the advantage they have in
users that have already adopted their IM clients. This proposal protects
that advantage.
Each IM vendor’s user community still remains protected. This is because
each user continues to use the vendor’s proprietary client. The user would
not need to switch their clients to talk to a buddy on another system since
the cross platform message and presence exchange is handled server to
server.
Security Maintenance
Vendor does not have to worry about the user inputting their platform
specific login name and password into a third party client. This is because
the cross platform communication would happen server-to-server just like
email.
User Benefits
Interoperability definitely will increase user delight in many different
ways. Users no longer will have to leave out communication with their
Internet friends that use other IM clients. They will also not have to run
multiple IM vendor clients on their desktop to keep in touch with friends on
multiple IM buddy lists. The user can have a single IM id instead of
multiple ids across multiple systems.
Interoperability has been a reality in major forms of communication. Telco’s
and Email providers permit it. What’s more so do the traditional “snail”
mail carrier – US post will work with Postal services across the world to
exchange letters. The time is ripe for IM vendors to do the same.
If you would like to comment on this article please email the author at
[EMAIL PROTECTED]
http://www.chatterfish.com
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