In an Instant

Instant coffee, instant breakfast and instant updates to constantly breaking news have become hallmarks of an American society that lacks patience. Translating that fidgetiness to the wireless environment, vendors and carriers are developing and deploying instant messaging platforms that borrow most of the traits of the familiar IM application from the PC.

Pigeonholing wireless IM is becoming increasingly difficult, however. Initially conceived as an extension of European carriers' widely popular SMS — a major attraction for the teen and youth market — many in the IM industry are beginning to rethink their strategy.

VoiceStream, among the first in the U.S. to make the jump, is offering AOL's Instant Messenger to customers who buy a Nokia 3390 Gold handset. The VoiceStream service, which costs $2.99 per month for 500 messages, isn't marketed toward any particular group, but based on the typical VoiceStream customer could be perceived as a service that fits well into the enterprise environment. Indeed, many vendors that specialize in IM claim that the high-end enterprise users fit the demographic in which the technology will gain traction in the wireless environment.

“The enterprises have all really grasped the power of portal computing,” said John Fannelli, director of product marketing for communications for iPlanet, an alliance between Sun Microsystems and Netscape Communications that has developed messaging software for enterprise users.

“Our IM capabilities are tied into calendaring and messaging interfaces. We've seen even more demand for instant collaboration.”

In fact, most vendors see a clean slate in which they can push IM for what it really has become — a subset application that takes advantage of the latest in presence technology. iPlanet, for instance, has more than 190 million mailbox entries licensed to enterprise users through its portals. IM is simply an extension of the concept, according to Fannelli.

“We see that there's a strong need between the communications products and portals, which are all about access based on your community.”

Presence management — the ability of users to determine whether, and how, they can be contacted — is becoming the hallmark of IM in the enterprise. When users log onto their portal via iPlanet software with the IM module, not only are their personal preferences recognized, but so is their context, or device and location.

“It also starts to pull into the notion of presence,” said Fannelli. “I can be logged into my system at my desk, but I may be at lunch and log in with my Palm. Presence isn't binary. It's more intelligent.”

In a real-world example, many within the IM community cite, a sales representative could allow his 10 most important clients to have his IM identifier. Assuming those clients are using interoperable software, they would have instant access to the sales representative regardless of his location.

Allaying fears over invasion of privacy, one of the most important aspects of presence management is the user's ability to control that access.

“Knowing someone is there is a tangible benefit,” said Dan Cohen, CEO of Personity, an IM software vendor that signed a deal to provide software to Motorola for its own branded IM platform.

According to Cohen, the challenge is locating people on the move. Most software vendors are currently counting on getting location information via the carriers' HLR/VLR databases. However, getting that location information will be a lot easier said than done. Most carriers have the means to track users, but managing that presence information requires a fair amount of customer intervention.

“If I send you an AOL IM, should I go to your wireless phone or your PC?” said Cohen. “Once you start bringing in other types of devices, it's a whole new ballgame.”

Like its wired cousin, wireless IM and presence management will never take off fully unless vendors can solve the interoperability and technical questions.

With VoiceStream's AOL IM service, for instance, users can send messages only to others also using AOL IM. And while that universe is massive — at more than 25 million users — dozens of other giants, including Microsoft and Yahoo!, want in on the action.

Several initiatives currently are under way to make clients interoperable, though many have questioned AOL's commitment to the process.

Among the most promising is the effort within Wireless Village, an alliance founded in April 2001 between Ericsson, Motorola and Nokia. Using handsets from all three companies and two different vendors' software, the group in September was able to demonstrate how users could send instant messages among themselves. The effort, which now unites 82 member companies, will develop interface specifications for traffic between servers and also between servers and handsets. The specifications will be based on the SIMPLE (SIP for Instant Messaging and Presence Leveraging Extensions) protocol, which has backing from both AOL and Microsoft.

SIMPLE, which originated in the wired world, is generally thought to be a relatively “light” protocol, meaning messages don't carry onerous header information. In the wireless environment, where bandwidth constraints are on the top of everyone's mind, that will be even more important.

“Wireless Village has to think very carefully about how all the information is packaged so we don't send needless information,” said Lars Novak, development manager for messaging applications for Ericsson and a member of the development team within Wireless Village.

“You don't need a big pipe to transmit this stuff.”

However, interoperability may not be a big issue for carriers that want to market presence and IM as an enterprise tool. In fact, restricting employees' ability to chat with friends who are part of the AOL IM environment could become a selling point. Non-interoperability also could reinforce the idea of creating “buddy lists” based on work-related criteria.

“At the end of the day, this must be more compelling for the enterprise user,” said Fannelli, whose company is working with AOL.

For carriers wanting to offer IM as a consumer service, interoperability is a must, although in the initial releases of wireless IM software, even many of the basic elements are handled in very different ways. In some cases, presence is handled by handsets sending signals to servers on a regular basis. In other cases, the server makes the assumption that the handset is always on.

With OpenWave, which has signed an IM contract with Genie in the U.K., users are tipped to incoming instant messages via SMS notification. It's not the most elegant solution, though initially the company is focusing most of its efforts on ease of use.

Typing in responses via a handset, for example, can be cumbersome for new users. OpenWave has developed a feature called Quick Text that tries to predict what users are typing as the words are formed.

“When we wrote the software, we thought, ‘How do we make it intuitive?’” said Jonathan Perera, senior director of product management for OpenWave's IM business unit. However, Perera said that beyond the technical issues, there's a major business issue — making presence and IM profitable.

Because Americans have become accustomed to getting the AOL IM for free, some question the willingness of users to pay for it in the wireless environment. Indeed, a number of vendors have closed up shop in the last year after failing to convince users that enhanced IM services such as voice and video capability are worth shelling out dollars for.

“We have to cross the lines between the best way to take care of our customers, but still make a reasonable living at it,” said Larry Sipovic with US Cellular. “We're not going to give a customer service until I know they want it. And right now, I don't know if that statement is true as regards to instant messaging.”

Sipovic added that there are concerns with U.S. carriers that have cobbled networks together via acquisition regarding how to offer seamless service. “Can we offer it in a CDMA phone in our Knoxville market when you roam to Miami? Do we see it in our future? Yes. Do we believe our customers are actively looking for it? No. Will they at some point? Yes.”

Still, perhaps the biggest challenge for U.S. carriers will be overcoming the cultural biases that slots IM as a PC-based application. By comparison, European carriers have a set of circumstances that make IM much more appealing including significantly more expensive voice calls, lower Internet penetration rates and a culture that is already well-versed in SMS.

“Clearly in Europe it's part of the social DNA,” said Perera.

The hope is that American's desire for everything instant will be the tipping factor. “What other culture in the world understands immediacy and connectedness better than the United States?” he said. “Our hope is that mobile IM will cross the chasm.”