Unified concept of presence

On a computing system, a method of unifying presence comprising:

• initializing a first instance of a presence application on a first computing system, the first instance of the presence application including a first application presence store for storing first application presence data, the first application presence store in communication with a first application abstraction layer including a first system presence store for storing first system presence data for the first computing system;
• initializing a second instance of the presence application on a second computing system, the second instance of the presence application including a second application presence store for storing second application presence data, the second application presence store in communication with a second application abstraction layer including a second system presence store for storing second system presence data for a second computing system;
• wherein the first system presence data comprises information describing the first computing system availability and the second system presence data comprises information describing the second computing system availability;
• the first instance of the presence application generating the first application presence data;
• wherein the first application presence data comprises information describing the availability of the first instance of the presence application and the second application presence data comprises information describing the availability of the second instance of the presence application;
• pushing, from the first application abstraction layer through the second application abstraction layer, to the second application presence store, both the first system presence data and the first application presence data;
• storing both the pushed first system presence data and the first application presence data in the second application presence store;
• and
• wherein the first application abstraction layer and the second application abstraction layer comprise a common interface for accessing the first system presence data and the first application presence data at the second instance of the presence application, and for accessing the second system presence data and the second application presence data at the first instance of the presence application.

A distributed computer system comprising:

• an application abstraction layer including a system presence store that stores system presence data that describes an availability of a first one of a plurality of presence-enabled computers;
• one or more presence-enabled applications executing on each of the plurality of presence-enabled computers, each of the one or more presence-enabled applications including an application presence store that stores application presence data that describes the availability of each corresponding one of the one or more presence-enabled applications, wherein each application presence store is in communication with an application abstraction layer at each of the plurality of presence-enabled computers;
• and
• a processor configured to:
• generate both system presence data for a first presence-enabled computer of the distributed computer system and application presence data for a first presence-enabled application executing on the first presence-enabled computer;
• store the generated system presence data in the system presence store of the first presence-enabled computer and the generated application presence data in the application presence store of the first presence-enabled application;
• and
• wherein the application abstraction layer publishes, to each application presence store of the one or more presence-enabled applications executing on one or more of the plurality of presence-enabled computers other than the first presence enabled computer, and through the application abstraction layer of the first presence-enabled computer, both the generated system presence data and the generated application presence data to a second one or more of the application presence stores, the application abstraction layer comprises a common interface for each of the one or more presence-enabled applications to access both the generated system presence data and the generated application presence data.