Sunday, June 26, 2005

Network-Centric Presence

Since Microsoft acquired Groove, and especially following some mysterious hints from ex-Groover and network-centric blogger Michael Helfrich, I've been wondering what Michael was up to. His latest blog posting on Network-Centric Products reveals that he is now with Jabber.

At first sight, Jabber appears to be merely selling a set of technical communication products for Enterprise Instant Messaging. There is a lot of technical material available via the Jabber Software Foundation. See also this Jabber Presence world map.

But now I am aware of Michael's involvement in Jabber, so this prompts me to take a closer interest in new opportunities created by the technology of presence. Jabber defines presence as "the rich suite of changing characteristics that describe the state of a user, device, or application".

I see this notion of presence as highly relevant to service-oriented architecture (SOA). In my work with the CBDI Forum, I have talked a lot about Differentiated Service - services whose operating characteristics vary according to a range of context indicators. I have argued that this is a key principle for achieving the SOA goal of network-centric adaptability.

Michael will be present (presenting? establishing a presence?) at the 4th Annual Government Symposium on Information Sharing and Homeland Security and his blog focuses on asymmetry and network-centricity in mitigating security threats.

As I have written in this blog and elsewhere, I see asymmetry and network-centricity as key issues for business strategy and business/IT alignment, and I think the commercial world can learn a lot from some of the latest military thinking. I look forward to seeing how Michael's next-generation product can be used to support business SOA (business-oriented architecture? architecture-oriented business?).

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