Mobile Intelligence

15.2 MOTIVATION

The advocates of presence technology and contextual services promise a world where people will be connected when they want, how they want, and with whom they want and their communication will be tailored on specific desires and preferences, according to circumstances [4].

One hypothetical scenario, described below, illustrates the capabilities of a system that offers converged services, this means services that combine voice, presence, Web, chat, and other elements. Although sounding futuristic, many individual components have been developed and our work proposes an architecture that will enable the realization of such scenarios.

Bill has a conference call at 9:00 am. It is 8:30 and he is stuck in traffic, but he does not worry. He subscribed to a presence management service that knows where he is and how best to reach him. The service forwards the call to his mobile phone so he joins the conference from his car. Once in his office, Bill starts working, but his phone rings continuously, distracting him. A solution is to have a call filtering service that routes all calls, except those from certain clients, to his voice mail. The service recognizes the key callers and routes each one to a personalized message from Bill. Regular callers hear Bill's usual voice message. In the meantime, Bill is able to complete his presentation. He then wants to talk to a customer. He is not sure where the client is (office, lunch, etc.) and which network (home, wireline, or wireless) ...