Presence and IntComm WG

["Ben Chinowsky" <>]

*PIC Working Group meeting*
December 5, 2006
Chicago, IL

*Action Items as of December 14*

(high priority)
[ACTION] (9/7) Mark will post his presence-agent code on the web.
[ACTION] (8/24 - in progress) Mark will see if he can find interest in the
presence-agent project on the Psi developers' list.
[ACTION] (5/18) Mark will evaluate prospects for modifying the calendar-
integration code written by Ben T.'s 2005 SoC student, to drive XMPP presence.

(medium priority)
[ACTION] (8/31) Dennis will contact Skyhook for more information.
[ACTION] (8/3) Rodger will put a discussion of current vendor offerings in the
location-services space on the agenda for a future call.
[ACTION] (pre-12/8 - in progress) Rodger and Joe will write up some use cases
for enterprise federations.

*Attendees*

Rodger Will (chair) - Ford
Bob Curtis
Mike Tucker - Polycom
Ric Simmons - LSU
Deke Kassabian - Penn
Tom Zeller - Indiana
Tyler Johnson - UNC
John Stier - Stony Brook
Jonathan Tyman - Internet2
Neal McBurnett - Internet2
Ken Klingenstein - Colorado/Internet2
Ben Chinowsky (scribe) - Internet2

*Discussion*

The group discussed VoIP deployments as they relate to presence. John noted 
that
on his campus he argues that VoIP without presence is pointless, and meets
considerable resistance. Tom characterized John's coworkers as proponents of
"absence" technologies, and agreed that "just replacing phones with phones" is
not worth doing; this was also the sense of the group as a whole. Rodger is
working on a large Cisco Call Manager deployment (30,000 phones deployed so 
far,
with at least 20,000 more planned). Cost savings are driving interest in this
for remote sites, and in open-source solutions further in the future. Deke 
noted
that "the SIP proxy scales amazingly"; this is not true for Asterisk. Deke 
also
stressed the importance of including infrastructure for presence capabilities 
in
VoIP deployments.

Mike noted that Polycom has been pursuing a strategy of integrating with
existing infrastructures such as Microsoft LCS and Alcatel; similar
functionality with IBM is in the works for 2007. John observed that 
"integration
with directory services is no longer questioned" -- everybody wants it.

Tyler noted that UNC has users buy and own their own phones, so they can 
decide
what functionality they want. The group discussed softphone-only solutions;
there was general agreement that users tend to resist this approach, but less
agreement on possibilities for overcoming this resistance. John noted that
hardphones are much less customizable; e.g., you can't adjust the size of the
display. On the other hand, the time it takes a computer to boot is an issue 
for
softphones; John noted that some computers can play a CD without Windows
running, and suggested adding similar softphone capability to the hardware.

Rodger pointed out that if you don't keep the users happy, they'll go off and
create their own solutions, e.g. relying on cellphones for everything. Tom
noted the difficulty of pleasing everybody with a single approach -- for
example, open source solutions can't offer the integration that Windows fans
are used to. At Indiana, online calendars are already thoroughly balkanized;
Tom's biggest concern is preventing this from happening in other areas.

Penn is working to converge all services around the 

 address.
Deke described his approach as to "get people addicted" to this so he can 
build
presence around the converged services. Neal pointed out that this makes it a
lot harder to get rid of a badly spammed email address. There was general
agreement that changing email addresses isn't a viable approach to spam 
control
anyway; John compared it to asking an identity-theft victim to change their
name. John also suggested that if we let VoIP become as spam-ridden as the
current generation of email, "we're dead". Ken suggested that DKIM and
reputation-based spam control offer solutions; these technologies are being
developed for email, but are also applicable to VoIP and other forms of
real-time communication. Ken stressed the need for deployers of real-time
communications systems to start looking into federated approaches to
authentication.

Layered on top of federations is the concept of virtual organizations (VOs). 
Ken
noted that in this area Internet2 has been leapfrogged by efforts in Australia
(MAMS) and the UK (JISC), but that on the other hand these efforts are making
use of software developed by the Internet2 Middleware Initiative: Shibboleth,
Signet, and Grouper. Internet2 is hoping to get funding for work on VO-based
collaboration tools in the coming year; unified user interfaces and
international interoperability are priorities. Rodger noted that, at Ford,
being able to extend collaboration tools such as calendars to external
organizations is "our single most value-added use case." Tyler -- lead 
developer
of the H.350.7 XMPP directory standard -- noted that he is now working on
H.350.8, a standard for integrating real-time communications and VOs. Contact
Tyler 
()
 if you are interested in contributing to H.350.8.

The group also reviewed its recent work with XMPP and Second Life. Rodger 
noted
the Second Life session immediately following the PIC WG meeting:
http://events.internet2.edu/2006/fall-mm/sessionDetails.cfm?session=2877&event=258