Ubique (company)
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
| Ubique | |
 |
|
| Type | Startup |
|---|---|
| Founded | 1993 - Purchased by IBM in 1998 |
| Headquarters | Rehovot,Israel |
| Key people | Ehud Shapiro, Avner Shafrir |
| Industry | Presence Technology |
| Products | Virtual Places |
[edit] History
1994 - Ubique Ltd, the creator of Virtual Places, was founded in Israel by Ehud Shapiro and a group of scientists from the Weizmann Institute.
Virtual Places was an innovative and a popular 2-dimensional presence based chat in the early days of the Web. It is still an inspiration and in service by some providers like: VPChat, Voodoo Chat and Digital Space.
1995 - America Online Inc. purchased Ubique Ltd., the developer of real-time interaction and joint navigation technology for the Internet. AOL intended to use Ubique's Virtual Places technology to enhance and expand its existing live online interactive communication for both its consumer online services and its new Internet brand service.
Eventually AOL did not launch Virtual Places as part of the AOL propriety network, however it was launched successfully by Global Network Navigator/GNN, an AOL Internet community service between 1994-1996. When AOL introduced its flat rate in 1996 along with full Internet access, GNN was discontinued. GNN's accounts were rolled-over into AOL.
Ubique's management, Ehud Shapiro and Avner Shafrir, with the support of AOL, decided to look for other markets for Virtual Places technology. The outcome was that Ubique has shifted Virtual Places from the entertainment-consumer market to focus on presence technology and instant messaging for the corporate market. Some Virtual Places entertainment-consumer based communities are still alive on the Web and are using the old version of it.
1998 - Ubique Ltd was acquired by Lotus/IBM to integarate the Virtual Places core technology of instant messaging and presence functions into Lotus/IBM offerings. Originally bought by America Online Inc in 1995, Ubique co-developed AOL's instant messaging technology. Lotus said that the instant messaging function will be available in a new product family known as Sametime and in Lotus Notes.
The integration with Sametime went well and Virtual places technology became an important component of Lotus/IBM offering.
2000 - Lotus announced Lotus Sametime using Ubique's technology.
2006 - IBM HAIFA SOFTWARE LAB (formerly UBIQUE LTD.) uses leading-edge technologies to design and develop Session Initiation Protocol/SIP infrastructure and features of real-time collaboration, including session management, presence awareness, subscriptions and notifications, text messaging, developer toolkits, and mobile real-time messaging infrastructure. The lab has been in existence since 1994, when it pioneered work in instant messaging and presence technologies. In 1998, the lab was acquired by IBM to work on next-generation technologies for Lotus products.
