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Story URL: http://www.silicon.com/research/specialreports/collaboration/0,3800003020,39121940,00.htm

SIP paves the way for seamless collaboration
Taking the pain out of long-distance communication

By Stewart Baines

Published: Wednesday 07 July 2004

A protocol called SIP gives you the ability to work closely with others in a variety of media - no matter where you are. And this is only the beginning. Stewart Baines reports.

While flexible, decentralised working is now par for the course in so many businesses, it hasn't negated the need to meet, collaborate and communicate with colleagues and clients.

Anyone who's experienced trying to set up a multi-way conference for audio, web or video will realise that working from home - or from a hotel halfway around the world from your central office - isn't necessarily the perk it's cracked up to be.

Time saved from not travelling in rush-hour traffic to a city centre office is often lost trying to connect to colleagues with IM, mobile, PSTN, web, Skype or SMS, only to find they were unavailable to answer your urgent query.

If only there was a way of coordinating people, processes and communications in a distributed environment... Well, there is, and it's called SIP, or session initiation protocol. SIP is a signalling system that establishes, modifies and terminates multimedia sessions, and is designed to be device- and vendor-independent.

It allows different types of media sessions – audio, video, web or text – to be connected and torn down over the same pipe, thereby saving money on running a number of consecutive conference services. It also saves time by communicating directly with a colleague's preferred communications media. SIP ties together presence information – whether a person is available to talk, in a meeting, etc. – from all communications channels. So, if you take a mobile call, your IM presence will tell others trying to contact you that you're on the phone.

Tim Dillon, principal analyst with Current Analysis, said: "SIP-enabled applications are ideal for workgroups where small teams of distributed staff need to collaborate on a regular basis. SIP allows session profiles to be stored, documentation to be shared and sessions to be set up and torn down much quicker than traditional conferencing channels. It can save a lot of time as well as creating a richer, collaborative environment."

SIP is becoming the basis for a number of next-generation communications services and products. It is the foundation for Skype, the free-to-download P2P VoIP application that is making the IT press foam at the mouth. Over 15 million downloads have lead to one million active users of the software, claims Skype.

But Skype's not limited to being a free VoIP application. Like IM clients, it has a chat facility, presence awareness and can support multi-way conferences. Although not designed for document collaboration and video conferencing, a fair number of business users, particularly distributed small companies, have been using Skype as a way of cutting down on phone bills. It's SIP capability that dictates both chat and voice availability.

"Presence and voice-over-broadband is something carriers are definitely taking a serious look at. BT's Communicator, which adds VoIP capabilities to Yahoo! Messenger, is their attempt to lash on to the bandwagon," says Current Analysis' Tim Dillon. BT-Yahoo! Communicator launches commercially in July and will support free calling between Yahoo! Messenger users as well as a breakout option for calling fixed and mobile phones.

SIP's presence management capabilities are also built into Orange's nascent Push to Talk (P2T) service. And SIP allows P2T messages to be sent to multiple recipients simply by grouping them together in a workgroup, so it can be used as a broadcast tool.

What makes all of this more interesting is that Microsoft is putting its weight behind SIP. Its Live Communications Server, a real-time collaboration platform, is the basis for Siemens innovative SIP and presence application server, Openscape. It uses SIP to connect colleagues and clients using various media, saving sessions and project documentation in a centralised resource.

Craig Pollard, head of product development at IT security advisors Insight Consulting, was sceptical when first introduced to Openscape by Insight's parent company Siemens. The German company had been pitching Openscape as an innovative means of slashing time spent trying to connect with people who weren't there. Openscape, using presence awareness, could save an hour a day, or so the marketing collateral posited.