 Building Community One Message at a Time |
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About APUIMAPUIM is Azusa Pacific University's Secure Instant Messaging service. APUIM enables secure electronic real-time communication amongst APU community members over the Internet, and continued interaction with the extended community via public instant messaging transports. APUIM is an implementation of the Jabber Messaging framework. For more information about Jabber and the APUIM service see the Getting Started section of the APUIM FAQ. BackgroundVisionThe Reality of IMAs in other organizations, Instant Messaging (IM) is already being used extensively by the students, faculty and staff of APU. Many have wondered, if public instant messaging resources are already available to university members, which is why IMT needs to address IM. Any technology that is used across the entire enterprise, needs to meet certain requirements that ensure security, interoperability, manageability, stability, flexibility, and extensibility. The Uses of IMThe Internet has changed our expectations of communication. Email has changed the format and the speed of correspondence, often replacing letters and paper memos. In many cases, email has become more convenient than phone calls for short messages. However, as useful as email is, it has its limitations. Unlike a phone call where someone picks up on the other end, one never knows if the person he/she is sending email to is online. Like voicemail, there is no guarantee that the person will read their email and respond within a reasonable amount of time. While more productive than "phone tag", trying to carry out conversations via email that reflect normal patterns of speaking is rather difficult. IM, like email, was not meant to replace previous forms of communication, but is a new tool which many Internet users have found powerful. APU needs to take advantage of this new technology. IM is often mistaken as only a way to chat on the computer, but its real value is more broad, fulfilling an emerging field of Presence Management. Presence management is the ability to determine someone's location and availability status. Once the status is determined, communication can be achieved regardless of where the person is. This is why instant messaging has become so popular with home users, and is the same reason why those home users have brought it into work. It offers a way to be located over the Internet by those that they allow, whether they are family, friends or colleagues. Rather than a interrupting a worker with a phone call, one can see that the worker has set their status as being unavailable due to a meeting. Through Presence technology, availability and "location" on the Internet can be determined. Officially, and unofficially, IM has proliferated the work environment. Colleagues are sharing ideas between departments, and even between organizations. Customer service groups are using it to resolve customer problems in a personal way. Regional centers and remote offices are using it as a means to bridge the physical and emotional distance between them and other campuses. The future of IM is broad. Organizations are attempting to utilize presence management technology through the use of mobile devices such as PDAs and mobile phones, and by embedding it within Enterprise Applications. Imagine the benefit of a regional sales person receiving IM notification from the ERP system, while out in the field, that an important PO has been received. If presence management is able to be integrated with enterprise systems, the possibilities are endless. Why Jabber?When considering deployment of a University-wide IM solution, the following areas should be addressed: security, directory integration, openness of the architecture, client-server model, software integration, broad client availability, worldwide access, and community building opportunities. SecurityJabber implements several layers of security, including secure transport, secure password handling, secure server to server communication, and end to end message encryption through PKI. It is easy to deploy across the firewall, allowing full access to remote native clients securely over the public Internet. A notebook with IM software will be able to use the same settings in communicating with the APU community whether they are on campus or at home through an external ISP. Complete transparency, whether on the campus wired LAN, on the campus Wireless network, or the Internet Open ProtocolJabber uses the Open XMPP protocol which is quickly becoming an IETF standard through INTERNET-DRAFTS published by the recently formed XMPP working group. The momentum is furious and is challenging SIMPLE as a viable IM / Presence protocol. Jabber at is core, is simply an XML switch, and as such is gaining much interest as a Web Services persistant discovery and message delivery mechanism. Public IM GatewaysExperts in the industry could not overemphasize the importance of offering external gateways for in house messaging solutions due to the fact that IM has not reached the federated nature of e-mail. Gateways to public messaging services are a key selling point for Jabber, and part of its original intent. The original author saw Jabber as a means to bridge between different messaging systems, providing routing between public IM networks as well as e-mail and Internet Relay Chat (IRC) networks. Clifton Pee, IMT's Student Services Manager, was interviewed regarding University IM, and he felt the importance of gateways was essential to the University environment, where students often prefer IM to email. APU currently has an IRC server in operation, which can be accessed by anyone via üdeupa, the campus portal. This chat server is rarely used by students. Students will join a room and if they don't get a response from someone else in the "chat room" within 5 seconds, they leave and never use it again. This is the fast paced culture of our incoming student population, and IM is their preferred mode of electronic communication. They wish to remain connected with their friends and family, and this is only possible with University IM if we have public IM gateways.
Integration Architecture"The characteristics that have propelled Jabber's use as an extensible messaging system make it ideal for expansion into a full scale Web Services platform for the new Executable Internet. Jabber provides key advantages as a deployment vehicle for the Executable Internet, including XML routing, logical peer to peer connections, firewall access and directory services." "Web Services is characterized by the availability of applications, rather than simply pages of content, across the open network. The services would not be preintegrated, but they would acceess each other using standard "contracts" for input and output data. Rather than a serial flow of data out and back, as in the traditional web model, smaller fragments of informatin pass between multiple services on the Executable Internet. A deployment fabric that enables Web Services to find each other in a truly dynamic and distributed fashion will be required for significant Web Services deployment. Jabber for Web Services: Extensible Messaging to Executable Internet IMT is currently pursuing an Integration Architecture that will promote quality information systems and move us toward e-business and self service initiatives. It is doing this with an ERP project, with a portal project, and with the creation of a middleware architecture that will enable Enterprise Application Integration (EAI) and Business Process Management (BPM). The core of these efforts requires not only a common data interchange format (XML), but the means to deliver messages between our systems. Instant Messaging is only the tip of the iceberg in relation to uses of XML-based messaging, and therefore it is advantageous for APU to invest in a messaging platform that can solve both immediate needs, and allign us for future integration possibilities. Jabber clearly aligns itself with this architectural vision. Jabber: An IM / Presence Platform StrategyBased on the work of the Logical Design Team, extensive research, and consultation with the Burton Group, Jabber/XMPP is recommended as the platform/protocol in alignment with both our architectural vision and our customer requirements. It meets our immediate needs for an Instant Messaging solution for the APU community, and fits in with application integration strategies essential for offering innovative and intelligent information services to our constituents over the Internet. James Janssen Links
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