The war of presence and instant messaging: Right protocols and APIs

Instant messaging coupled with presence and availability, management serf-ices is emerging as a killer application in both wireless and wire-line networks. This led to the emergence of a number of standard protocols (SIP/SIMPLE, Wireless Village, JABBER etc.) in addition to proprietary protocols (MSN, Yahoo!, AOL etc.) and standard APIs (JAIN SIMPLE, JAIN Presence, JAIN Instant Messaging, PAM, JAIN PAM, etc.). In this paper, we present the motivations, the objectives, as well as the scope and technical merits of each of these standards. In addition, we discuss, in detail the chances of any, of these standards prevailing in the industry and the relevant standardization bodies. Significant effort will be devoted to the discussion and analysis of presence and instant messaging enabling technologies. In particular, we will emphasize the role of Java middleware in enabling and animating such services. Finally, we expose our views on how the various involved forums (in which those presence and instant-messaging protocols and APIs are being elaborated) can work together to define and promote a coherent suite of specifications, architectures, implementations, technology compatibility requirements and roadmaps.