SIP PRESENCE
In today’s world there are many communication devices to choose from, but with little or no integration between them, getting in touch is often a frustrating process. The result is often a guessing game for callers and a time-consuming burden of managing communication silos for those being called.
SIP helps transform the communications paradigm from a device-centric to a user-centric model. In this world all forms of communication can now become integrated as a single tool and how calls are handled, where they are routed, and the type of communication allowed can all be controlled by the user.
Callers also benefit through presence by learning about the availability of the person they are trying to reach and how they wish to be contacted even before they reach out to that person. For example, when a user is on a phone within an Avaya voice network, their status ("on the phone") can be automatically updated and communicated to a central presence server. This presence information is then distributed to other users through the integrated telephony/IM contact list.
Instead of calling the user and getting a busy signal or transfer to voice-mail, the co-worker sees that the user is on the phone and may instead check for when the user is "available" or send a polite instant message with a request for a return phone call. Presence helps re-establish the informal and spontaneous communications so critical to small workgroups, even if the workgroup is physically distributed, turning real-time communications into "right-time" communications that allow colleagues to reach the right person, at the right time, in the right place, using the right device.
