Instant-Messaging Players Reel In Partners, Push ProductsInstant-Messaging Players Reel In Partners, Push Products

Instant messaging in business got a boost Wednesday as several companies, including major players such as America Online, Microsoft, and Yahoo, unveiled products and unveiled partnerships in the online presence and messaging marketplace at a conference dedicated to IM.

Vendors at the Instant Messaging Planet Fall 2003 Conference & Expo, which opened in San Jose, Calif., took advantage of a captive audience to tout their new wares.

Yahoo said it's shipping Yahoo Business Messenger 2.0, the newest version of its enterprise-quality messaging service that also ties with WebEx, an online meeting and collaboration service. Available immediately, Business Messenger 2.0 can be hosted on Yahoo servers, an attractive option for small- and mid-sized companies, or run internally by larger organizations. The link with WebEx lets users launch a collaboration session from within the framework of Messenger--a feature similar to what Microsoft offers through its own IM client and Live Communications Server software.

America Online disclosed that it's partnering with Akonix, a developer of enterprise IM management software, to create additional applications that would let businesses better handle traffic in enterprises that rely on AOL's Instant Messenger. By certifying Akonix as a partner, AOL said it was guaranteeing that the companies' products would work together seamlessly, and be supported by both. Akonix L7 Enterprise, an IM management suite, includes compliance features for businesses that must meet regulatory requirements of storing and auditing instant messages, can dynamically update IM signatures, and enforces company IM security and usage policies.

Not willing to take a back seat to its competitors, Microsoft made noise about additional support from third-party developers for its Live Communications Server 2003, the vendor's IM and collaboration server software.

Part of the Office System product line--and integrated with the applications in Office 2003, which officially launches next week--Live Communications Server 2003 picked up support from nine new partners, including major players in the IM market such as IMLogic and FaceTime.

IMLogic said it has integrated its IM Manager, an IM management package that lets corporate IT log, archive, and report on instant-messaging use in the workplace, with Microsoft's server software. The collaboration of the two products, the companies said, will extend Live Communications Server's reach beyond the firewall, allowing MSN Messenger users to connect to Microsoft's external--and public--IM network. The product will also provide spam filtering and spam defenses for Live Communications Server customers, and archive all traffic for compliance requirements.

FaceTime, another vendor that moved into the Microsoft camp, also plays in the security and management IM space, and will support Live Communications Server in upcoming releases of its IM Auditor and IM Director products in the last quarter.

But even the support of so many primary players in IM won't make Live Communications Server 2003 an instant hit, said one analyst. According to David Ferris of Ferris Research, a firm that specializes in tracking E-mail, IM, and collaboration trends, the leader, by a long shot, in enterprise IM remains IBM Lotus Instant Messaging and Web Conferencing (formerly called Sametime). "The move by third-party developers could eventually make Live Communications the default IM server," said Ferris, "but it will take quite a while. Five years, maybe 10. I think Live Communications Server will prove to be a good product, and assuming Microsoft doesn't screw things up, which it's quite capable of doing, and has done before in instant messaging, people will gradually start to make use of it."

One trend in strong evidence at IM Planet is the continued integration of IM with other applications, particularly Web conferencing. Yahoo wasn't the only vendor to tout new IM-conferencing functionality. LiveOffice, a business Web-site hosting service, said it had begun beta testing its IMConferencing software, and expects to roll out a final release in January. IMConferencing, like other IM-collaboration integrated efforts, will let users launch ad hoc online meetings from within an instant-messaging session.

"This kind of collaboration between IM and conferencing is absolutely natural," Ferris said in describing the hot-button trend toward blending instant messaging with other Web-based tools.

But for all its progress in penetrating the business world, IM still suffers from the same major flaw it labored under half a decade ago. "What we would really like is to communicate with anybody," Ferris said, "but we're still stuck with proprietary IM choices."