presence management: Simply connecting people?
Gartner predicts that by
2009, 80% of business
applications will support
at least a basic level of
presence awareness.
GETTING THE CULTURE RIGHT of employees enter the workplace already immersed
Embedding presence management in an organisation in Presence Management, through products such as
requires more than simply ‘plugging in’ a new blend Skype and FaceBook. And of course customers are
of applications. Clear strategies are essential for likely in the future to expect such presence capability
effective use of presence (e.g. ensuring compatibility from the organisations they deal with – kids nowadays
of technologies for true integration) and the processes know the whereabouts of their friends through their
that will benefit most from presence management need mobile, PC or PS3 pretty much from the time they get in
to be understood. And, of course, there are cultural from school till they go to bed!
implications in connecting people in this way.
THE FUTURE
With presence management, individual communication Presence-enabled applications are predicted to grow
preferences and availability status on particular and offer solutions to some of the communications
communication channels are known. The challenge challenges experienced in many organisations today
to optimising the benefits comes in getting people to – particularly those with global operations.
provide accurate information about their availability.
Being constantly connected comes at a price and However, adoption is likely to be slow as the technology
if there is too much transparency, there is a risk that is not yet mature, tends to be deployed gradually rather
people exercise their right to privacy by blocking than enterprise-wide and requires careful integration
incoming messages or marking themselves unavailable. with other applications. And technology is only part of
On the other hand, if there is insufficient transparency the answer. The real benefits will only be realised when
the presence management will be meaningless. Getting the right organisation culture is in place and when
the balance right can be difficult. people believe that presence awareness is a fair trade
for their privacy.
Forrester cites one large enterprise where all
350,000 users have presence embedded instant
1 Gartner Group, Develop a Strategy for Presence Technologies, March 2006
2 Gartner Group, IM/Presence trend, April 07
messaging, with an average of 180,000 users
3 Gartner Group, Presence in Social Networks and Online Communities, May 2007
logged on at any given time. The vast majority
4 Avaya Press Release, “Unveils Breakthrough Intelligent Presence Technology For
of employees use the system, which is now
Real-time Business”, March 2008
5 Forrester research, “It’s not your kids instant messaging, IM takes its place at the
considered business-critical to the extent that business table”, April, 2007
IM has become the “canary in the coal mine”
that indicates a network outage
5
.
The expectation is that this will become less challenging
over time, as people become more familiar with
working in this way and as the ‘always on’ generation
Perspectives on technology | 1
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