The platform an operator bought in order to run its own messenger: a service centre, a presence layer, a federation gateway, and the handset clients that made it visible to subscribers.
IMSC
The operator’s own messaging community, addressed by mobile number rather than a screen name. Branded by the carrier, billed by the carrier, and built to the same availability expectations as SMS.
PSP
The layer underneath everything else: collecting, managing and distributing availability from many sources, with group management and privacy controls. Later re-engineered as a SIP application server over 3GPP IMS.
ICP
Federation for instant messaging. As with email, a message finds its recipient without either party caring which network or community they belong to — the piece that let Orange and Vodafone link their messengers.
Clients
The part subscribers actually touched: IM clients for 2G, 2.5G and 3G handsets, preloaded by manufacturers or downloaded, with the phonebook turned into a live buddy list.
The third of those, the Interconnect Platform, is the one with descendants. It was built for the GSM Association’s Personal IM programme — operator-hosted messaging, addressed by phone number, federated between networks — and that programme became RCS.
Design principles
No screen names. Subscribers were addressed by MSISDN — the number already in everyone’s phonebook — which is what made the handset address book work as a buddy list and what made cross-network federation conceivable at all. It was there from the start: the login on Eircell’s e-merge messenger in 2001 asked for your mobile number, last seven digits.
The service was branded, billed and operated by the carrier, to carrier availability expectations, with network management and customer-relations mechanisms built in. Followap sold infrastructure, never a consumer app.
The company contributed to OMA, IETF, 3GPP and the GSM Association, and supported the competing presence protocols rather than picking one — because a messenger that reaches only its own customers is not a messenger. It is the reason the work outlived the company, as RCS.
Protocols and certifications
Presence, concretely
Presence meant collecting availability from many sources, reconciling it, and distributing it under the subscriber’s own privacy rules — then letting other services subscribe to it.
Collect
Device state, network registration, the phone profile, and the subscriber’s own declared status — available, busy, driving, in a meeting.
Manage
Complete subscriber control over who sees what, plus group management (GLMS) so communities, chat rooms and shared lists were first-class objects.
Distribute
Other services subscribed to it: Push-to-Talk, dynamic address books, multiplayer gaming, live content, dating, voice conferencing that waits until everyone is free.
Deployments
Networks named in the company’s own announcements. By late 2006 the platform powered more than fifteen operator-owned messaging communities; by May 2007 the figure given was twenty-six operators and close to 300 million subscribers between them, and by February 2008 it was more than thirty-one.
Sole global IM platform provider from 2001, and the messenger that shipped with Vodafone live!. Vodafone’s own 2006 annual report put the service in 11 countries with full MSN Messenger compatibility; by 2008 Portugal alone was carrying two million messages a day.
TurkcellMessenger on the iFollow Presence Solution, including group management, IMS-readiness and a presence development environment.
iFollow Mobile Messaging Gateway plus preloaded and downloadable 3G clients, bridging to MSN Messenger.
Presence-based mobile-to-mobile communication with a dynamic contact list.
Operator-branded IM on the iFollow IMSC for Egypt’s largest operator.
IMSC and clients serving 48 million subscribers in Russia, under NeuStar.
Interconnect Platform and Hub, targeting network-to-network mobile IM across Malaysia.
The first of all of them: ‘e-merge messenger’, live in Ireland in December 2000 and the first instant messaging service commercially available on mobile phones.
The first commercial launch inside the Vodafone group, in front of more than 18 million Italian subscribers from May 2002.
An early operator customer in Israel, integrating the instant messaging and presence platforms directly into its network from 2002.
Thailand’s fully integrated operator, running a Followap-powered Messenger service from December 2005.
Europe’s first fully featured mobile MSN Messenger and Hotmail service, on IXI’s Ogo device with Followap’s Mobile Messaging Gateway behind it.
MSN Messenger on mobile for more than 3.5 million UK customers, chosen for Followap’s “mature and scalable technology” and sold to subscribers on television.
Its own-branded instant messaging on the iFollow IMSC and clients, built into a dynamic address book for one of Italy’s largest operators.
Windows Live Messenger alongside 3 Italia’s own IM community, for more than 6.8 million customers on the IMSC and Mobile Messaging Gateway.
Customer by 2004
France’s second operator ran its mobile IM and presence on Followap’s platform by 2004, and in 2007 brought Windows Live Messenger to its subscribers on the same platform.
Customer through 2009
Italy’s largest operator ran TIM’s instant messaging on the platform and built on it in 2009 with TIM I’M, a presence-enabled contacts list.
Key customer
One of Followap’s key customers, alongside the Vodafone Group and Hutchison 3G, bringing the platform into the UK’s largest telecoms group.
Partners
Getting presence into the network core, onto the handset, and across vendor boundaries.
Integration
iFollow Presence Server interoperability-tested against Motorola’s IMS platform and its Push-to-Talk over Cellular service, so presence became a network component reachable over standard IMS interfaces.
Integration
A BREW-based Presence Extension letting third-party developers presence-enable their applications — demonstrated at CTIA Wireless 2004 with presence-aware multiplayer gaming.
Integration
Server-to-server interoperability between Jabber’s XCP and the iFollow platform, enabling competing French operators to launch services that federated with each other.
Integration
Open Access integrated with the presence server to add multiparty voice conferencing that could be scheduled against availability.
Integration
The iFollow client embedded in the LG U300 — the first handset with a dedicated instant messaging key.
Integration
Announced at 3GSM in February 2001: Siemens Information and Communication Mobile integrating iFollow into its mobile application services. Three months later Golem.de listed it in Siemens’s own Mobile Solutions portfolio — “an instant messaging platform adapted to the branding of the respective mobile network operator”, working over WAP, internet and SMS.
Integration
A strategic alliance to build the iFollow instant messaging, chat and presence client directly into Samsung handsets — agreed in February 2002, four years before the LG key.
Integration
The iFollow Presence Server made a component of HP’s Service Delivery Platform, running on HP Integrity servers under HP-UX or Linux with HP Services handling integration — and sold from HP’s own booth at CTIA.
Product demonstration, c. 2005
Presence running inside Nortel’s IMS core. There is no announcement for this one, but there is a filmed walkthrough of the integration, and NeuStar’s 2007 description of the platform “powering leading IMS networks such as Nortel”.