Your Presence is requested...

Part of my role is to get Partners and Customers to understand the Microsoft vision for Unified Communications. Unified Communications usually means different things to different people depending on where their allegiances lie.

In my mind it all boils down to Presence, without this part of the equation Unified Communication is a non starter. 

How many times have you picked up the phone, opened your contacts, struggled to going back and forth from screen to telephone numberpad, dialled the number (and assuming you have got it right first time) it connects and then goes straight to voicemail.

Pretty common - there is research out there that states this occurs 7 out of 10 times.

If I want to get in touch with any of my colleagues which use presence I immediately know which form of communication is going to be the best way to reach them and to make me more productive.

What is Presence?  The MS answer is here.

To take advantage of Presence you will need

Live Communication Server 2005 (LCS)

Within LCS presence is determined by a number of things including your availability and activity.

For instance you can set your presence manually but even if you set it to Online but you are not active then the presence will change.

Likewise if you start using another device that is presence aware it will show your availability on that device.

Finally Presence will also extract information from your calendar and change your presence to "in a meeting" if a appropriate.

LCS takes great strides to ensuring your presence is correct simply because if it is not then the likely hood of reaching you is flawed.

I will write later about how we use this presence information to make the right decisions which form of communication we use.