Ken's Magnificent Seven - My view on presence, relevance and context

An interesting analysis of technology areas by Ken Camp. First of all I definitely agree with him when he writes:

...our ecosystem has change. A year ago we focused on VoIP. Many companies and businesses, to their detriment, focused on VoIP as the end game. VoIP has never been the end game. VoIP is part of the foundation of networking - unified communications networking. And while unified communications is the hot buzz phrase of the moment, it's also a perfect description of the current evolution in technology. A variety of very specific technologies tied to data, voice and video networking are converging to provide an integrated, or unified communications architecture that bring about change to the way we work.

I see with pleasure that the first category is "Presence, Relevance and Context".
About Presence:

Presence management is an industry hot topic with many companies playing in to different pieces. Microsoft certainly wants to play (dominate) with the Live Communications Server, but the real innovation isn't taking place in Redmond.

It's true: LCS is something that almost every company looking at the enterprise context must deal with, but the real innovation comes - in my opinion - with the migration of presence(and location)-based communication tools inside mobile phones. There are a lot of good examples in the "Web 2.0" world: Eqo, Jumpclaimer, Nimbuzz, and others.

About Relevance:

Relevance is a word brought to our attention by iotum with their fabulous Relevance Engine. Relevance is all our status and availability. If I'm in a meeting, I can't take calls. If you're a telemarketer, you're spam and I don't want to talk to you. If you're family, I may want to be interrupted no matter what.

Ken cites GranCentral, Talkster and Twitter together with Iotum, and in this case I fully agree with him. Twitter, in particular, represents the easiest way to publish an availability status, as it is exactly how people do it with their mobile phones, sending SMS to inform about their status, without even knowing what the word "presence" or "relevance" can mean.
I see with interest some tools, classified in the Customer Relationship Management, which work heavily with the concept of relevance. I'm talking about communication tools that put in contact users browsing a web site with an operator, a customer care person and so on. In this case presence and relevance play an important role, as the communication depends on the availability of the responder, but also on the context of the "call". Examples are Helpcaster and LivePerson.

I end this post with Ken's conclusion, hoping that 2007 could really be "the year", even if I'll probably see the 2008 as a date in which users will be more aware and involved in their digital identity:

For the future, the big issue I see is how our personal information about presence, relevance and context must become part of our digital online identity. Identity management has been a very hot, and to me stalled and boring, topic for quite some time. The carriers, wireline and wireless alike, want to "own" our presence information. I think that's a problem. I own the information about me and I'll decide who can or cannot see it. I think in 2007 the industry will grapple with this. The key, as with digitial identity, lies in giving control to users, not to vendors and service providers.

Technorati Tags: Giacomo Vacca, Presence, Relevance, Ken Camp