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 _________________________________________________________________ MSN Photos is the easiest way to share and print your photos: http://photos.msn.com/support/worldwide.aspx _______________________________________________ jdev mailing list [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://mailman.jabber.org/listinfo/jdev