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I believe the communication technology will be the underlying foundation for the next generation of innovation on the Web, and this merge indicates the movement towards collaboration in bringing about “Unified Communication”

Mobile phones are replacing PCs at more and more tasks at a greater rate each day. In recognition of that, there will entail a number of efforts to bring services to the millions of people in the world who have bypassed using the personal computer as their primary method of accessing technology, and are instead using their mobile phone to access the Web, conduct financial transactions, and entertain themselves, shop, and more. (we are seeing this phenomenon in emerging markets like India, China and Korea)

It's been said that unified communications is the next big thing in networking, but "Presence" may be the next big thing in unified communications, presence is real-time information about a person's availability.

I believe the “Presence Technology” couldmore than Just person's availability. In many popular visions of ubiquitous computing, the environment proactively responds to individuals who inhabit the space. For example, a display magically presents a personalized advertisement, the most relevant video feed, or the desired page from a secret government document. Such capability requires more than an abundance of networked displays, devices, and sensors; it relies implicitly on recommendation systems that either directly serve the end user or provide critical services to some other application.

There is an understanding that SOAP and REST based services are not enough to meeting the new evolving trends (eg: Cloud Computing) We are already seeing some synergies in this area around XMPP. If you think AJAX changed the web experience, imagine a web with decentralized, open standards-based IM at its center. The changes that XMPP could enable for web innovation in general are quite interesting

The primary arguments against a future powered by XMPP are two. First, so much of what's already been developed is web-centric, based on http, that the options for mash up-fodder are relatively limited for XMPP. For a service to integrate a number of new and existing communication features, making the leap to a less ubiquitous protocol might not make sense. Time will tell if things like IM, Android and software like Jive's can change the near total imbalance in market share between communication protocols online

It's hard to know what role these obstacles will play in the future, but it is exciting to think about the possibilities that standards based approach like XMPP offers for real time communication

Gopal, thanks for the excellent comment and observation. On the emerging trends in Mobile & Internet architectures that have culminated in “Unified Communications”, a term that is spun several ways depending on telecom providers and vendors of software suites for Call center and Customer Interaction applications that can potentially merge several silo’s of Applications in the different Lines of Businesses [ LOB’s] in a Global Enterprise. Interesting blogging seems be happening around this topic and one of blog sites active on this topic is http://blog.ucstrategies.com/

The innovations/inventions of communication channels from Radio, Telephone, Tele-Printer, Telex, Satellite and TV to the interactive internet is happening at lightning speed as illustrated by the progression of e-mail, IM to Chat, Conferencing and virtual collaborative solutions.

The SMTP:mail that has been a traditional communication had become one of the key applications on the internet thanks to Yahoo, Google & Microsoft and several innovative companies prior to their acquisitions. And the innovative IM solutions like Jabber have placed XMPP – http://xmpp.org on the Internet Standards body IETF http://ietf.org and a quick look at what is happening with several contributions with IBM (UC²™), Cisco, Microsoft, Oracle (Beehive) and other vendors makes the real time communications as a key enabler driving a rapid speed in innovation. It is also interesting to note collaboration & convergence in sharing charges as demonstrated by HP-Oracle alliance and the recent acquisition of Jabber - http://jabber.com by Cisco.

As Gopal Padinjaruveetil has indicated “Presence”, a network view from a Nortel presentation - http://www.mobilein.com/UNPM.pdf would become a key enabler for future business collaboration and communication and we may see more convergence from collaboration/communication platform vendors, device manufacturers (Nokia) and Communication service providers around the Globe (Verizon, Alcatel , T-mobile)

Keen logic used in the article, fine....

Regards
SBL - BPO Services