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

Instant messaging, coupled with presence and availability management services, is emerging as a killer application in both wireless and wireline networks. This has 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.). 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 is devoted to the discussion and analysis of presence and instant messaging enabling technologies. In particular, we emphasize the role of Java middleware in enabling and animating such services. Finally, we reveal 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.