More Business-Friendly BlackBerry Devices Will Include IMMore Business-Friendly BlackBerry Devices Will Include IM

In a move to expand its instant-messaging offerings for businesses, Research In Motion Ltd. on Tuesday introduced partnerships with Microsoft and Novell, as well as expansion of an existing relationship with IBM.

RIM promises by the end of the year to have available its Live Communications Server Client for BlackBerry, which makes use of Microsoft Office Live Communications Server 2005. The product, which is expected to be ready for beta in September, will be designed to provide secure IM communications between BlackBerry devices and back-end Live Communications Server deployments. Microsoft Live Communications Server--which is based on Session Initiation Protocol and SIP for Instant Messaging and Presence Leveraging Extensions standards--provides a platform for developing real-time communications applications whose data can be accessed by desktop PC and mobile users.

RIM is also working with Novell to provide the first enterprise IM application for BlackBerrys using GroupWise Messenger. However, the companies haven't offered a release date for the integrated technology. GroupWise Messenger is the IM component of Novell's GroupWise 6.5 collaboration suite. Novell's partnership with RIM follows its February announcement that by the end of the year it will develop an open-source collaboration server called "Hula" that will deliver E-mail, calendaring, and address-book capabilities without the overhead of the full GroupWise suite, a move aimed directly at the mobile market.

Not to be left out, IBM is working with RIM to deliver by the end of the year the Lotus Instant Messaging client for BlackBerry. Lotus Instant Messaging for BlackBerry will communicate through Lotus Instant Messaging interfaces to connect BlackBerry users with their back-end data and provide a server-based audit trail of messages. Since July 2003, RIM has offered enterprise IM via IBM Lotus Instant Messaging Everyplace 3 for BlackBerry, a company spokeswoman says.

RIM last month revealed deals to let BlackBerry owners use America Online and Yahoo IM services through their devices. But that won't help many business users who, because of regulations or company policy, need to use their companies' IM services, which provide options such as archiving client communications.

Earlier this month, RIM took another step toward trying to strengthen its grip on the business market by adding support for Web services to the device's application-development environment, the BlackBerry Mobile Data System v4.1.