Sunday, June 15, 2008

Presence in the Cloud: It's not just for Buddy Lists Anymore!

I have been a huge fan of IM applications for a long time. There is just something wonderful about a dynamic list of agents and activities all flashing away down there on my taskbar. Presence is one of the cooler things to come out of the IM wave. But what happens when more than your friends start advertising their presence?

Imaging a grid of virtual instances, all advertising their current state via presence. They let you know load, health, activity, and heck they could even tell you they are bored. Now imagine another set of agents that are watching these node statuses. When a node is bored it gets spun down. When a component reports ill health, a ticket is issued for maintenance (hey IT guy, replace drive 145 in array 6).

What components do we currently write that would benefit from presence?