Lots of companies are cooking up products with SIP as a main ingredient. These include such big names as Alcatel, IBM, Microsoft, Novell, Polycom, Siemens, Sun and 3Com, and smaller players like BroadSoft, ipDialog, Mitel Networks, Snom Technology and Zultys Technologies. SIP-enabled VoIP is in the forefront, but messaging and presence, while not quite as far along as VoIP, appear on a lot of vendors' near-term road maps.
For example, IBM has made a strategic decision to incorporate SIP functionality into all future versions of its corporate messaging product, IBM Lotus Instant Messaging and Web Conferencing (formerly known as Sametime and an Editor's Choice award winner; see "IM Grows Up"). The product's messaging gateway now supports the SIMPLE (SIP for Instant Messaging and Presence Leveraging Extensions) protocol. This was an obvious choice for a gateway that can link messaging systems from different vendors until they all start incorporating SIP functionality into their client and server products. SIMPLE could do for messaging what SMTP does for disparate e-mail systems.
IBM further plans to incorporate SIP functionality--including presence-based features that make it easy to send availability information with documents--in all its client and server software. Presence, which IBM implements in a nonstandard environment, makes it possible to communicate the availability of an individual via office phone, mobile phone or IM and the preferred method of contact at any given time. An obvious place to implement and manage presence is with groupware, where it can be integrated with schedules. This is why IBM plans to incorporate it into Lotus Notes.
For its part, Microsoft has for a number of years incorporated SIP support in its MSN messenger clients, including its most recent version, MSN Messenger 6.0. Microsoft is also using SIP for its XP Messenger client, which comes installed on every XP desktop. Clearly, like IBM, Microsoft has made a strategic decision to base future voice and video communications on SIP, turning its back on the H.323 standard that powered the NetMeeting product and provided similar functionality.
Indeed, while H.323 has been around longer, you will be hard-pressed to find new development for H.323 products. Most vendors interested in standards-based communications have shifted their efforts toward SIP.
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