INDIGO SOFTWARE FIRST TO INTRO JAVA-BASED PRESENCE SERVER TO SPARK OFF INSTANT COMMUNICATIONS OVER THE INTERNET.

Indigo Software has released the Indigo Presence Server & Developer API, a natural graft for its SIP (Session Initiation Protocol) server suite, which enables the straightforward creation of communication applications utilizing users' presence information to its advantage.

In presence-enabled applications, presence information is continuously transmitted by users to advertise their availability or willingness to engage in various types of communications, possibly binding this information with actual location, preferred communication device or media capabilities. Collected and maintained by presence servers, this fickle yet critical information is valuably exploited by such network servers to change the behavior of Internet or telecom applications. For example, the benefits of presence are obvious for automatically setting up conferences as soon as every participant is ready, or else, decreasing the abandon rate in call center environments or even, for operators, improving call completion rates through presence-aware call routing.

"Presence is an example of the intrinsic extensibility of SIP for the rapid creation of Internet communications applications. A novel implementation of this feature, Indigo's presence server solution smartly bridges telephony and web applications. As such, it opens new opportunities in the application development space," said Henning Schulzrinne, Associate Professor of Computer Science and Electrical Engineering at Columbia University, New York, and co-author of SIP.

"This powerful new server is the cornerstone of our presence solution suite, recent `Product of the Year' award winner. Fully interoperable, Microsoft's Windows Messenger and Indigo's presence server are bonded systems that enable the swift construction of countless converged applications," commented Jean-Luc Sonnet, Lead Presence Solutions Developer at Indigo.

A generally available product, the Indigo Presence Server & Developer API is an SDK delivered as a complete solution containing all the tools needed to start the development of presence-enabled applications. This unique bundle combines a stand-alone application with a set of multi-level, fully documented APIs. The documentation package includes sample code, an HTML-based reference guide and a developer's guide.

With operations in both the US and Europe, Indigo Software is a forward-thinking software developer, architecting new Internet communications software toolkits for a broad range of application developers, integrators, OEMs and communications ASPs. Capitalizing on its award-winning, expandable communications software framework, Indigo provides a unique ensemble of Internet-infrastructure software components based on Session Initiation Protocol (SIP) and other Internet-genuine technologies sharing SIP's endowments. Devising unprecedented communications software tools for converged networks, Indigo gives an ever-expanding service providers market the power to transform the experience of integrated communications for a generation of customers with Internet savvy.