The emergence of IM standards
Although AOL has resisted the creation, use, and support of IM standards, neither IBM nor Microsoft can afford to develop IM platforms in a vacuum. Both intend to use emerging Web services standards so developers can create enterprise applications that take advantage of the real-time communications and presence awareness technology.Of course, AOL has been mandated by the US Federal Communications Commission (FCC) to open its AIM system to communicate with rival systems as a condition of approving its merger with Time Warner. AOL has continued to complain about the difficulties of making IM transparent but has nevertheless knuckled down and made some progress, initially working with IBM to test interconnectivity with Lotus SameTime.
The industry is moving toward a common standard called Session Initiation Protocol (SIP). A related protocol, SIMPLE, (SIP for Instant Messaging and Presence Leveraging Extensions) is getting wide vendor support. IBM's Sametime already uses SIP, and Microsoft has pledged future support for SIMPLE in its Greenwich products.
As the industry coalesces around accepted standards, developers will be able to write applications and code business processes that use presence and real-time communications sessions. The end result is that real-time collaborative activities will be integrated into standard business processes just as postal mail, the telephone, the fax, and e-mail have been.
While the industry sorts out interoperability issues, many users have taken matters into their own hands, and use multiple IM clients simultaneously. There are also a variety of applications which will let you interact simultaneously with AIM, MSN Messenger, and Yahoo Messenger users, as well as many others:
Cloudswell SCIM Enterprise Server
SCIM stands for Secure Cryptographic Instant Messenger, and one can hardly disagree with the nameââ,¬"the system supports 1024-bit encryption between the clients and the server. This application leans more toward the chat style of IM in that users can't leave messages on the server for users who are offline.
The SCIM client is very simple to install, though in the review version it is distributed as an executable that is locked to a server at a specific IP address. The client is limited to plain text, but it is fairly easy to use once you get the hang of what all the buttons do. The client is written in Java, so it can be made to work on just about any device or operating system with a Java Virtual Machine (JVM)
The SCIM Server is a bit more complicated, requiring Windows 2000 Server SP3, Sun Java 2, MySQL database, and PHP Extensions for IIS. The Java, MySQL, and PHP components are all free and provided on the installation CD.
Install documentation is very detailed, but the installation process seems needlessly complex and requires each package to be installed and configured separately.
The server is administered using PHP pages via a Web browser, and these are generally very easy to use. We had a couple of problems importing the data from Active Directory on our server, as it grabbed the wrong field for the user name, and we were unable to add users directly from the admin pages, but the add user feature direct from the client worked perfectly.
This looks like a very good secure, interoperable, and clean system, but it needs a bit of work on the installation process. Once you have it running there is no problem, though it would be nice if it could draw its user database directly and interactively from a corporate source (LDAP, Active Directory, etc.).
IBM Lotus Sametime 3.1
IBM/Lotus' Sametime server runs on the Domino groupware platform, which provides the base for the system install. Domino is a complex system for the novice to install, but if you are already running Lotus Notes, you are almost there. If you are new to the Lotus suite of products, you may find the system a little strange at first, but the Domino package is a powerful base for a variety of groupware applications.
The great advantage of Domino is its extensibility. You can use Notes for e-mail, Domino.Doc for document management, Workflow for business management, and Sametime for messaging. You can even write your own business applications.
Sametime provides a simple interface to communicate within your organisation. You can schedule a meeting or have an ad-hoc get together, share your screen or programs, edit shared files, and deliver online presentations. There is even the option to connect to a WebSphere Translation Server so that language barriers can be broken down.
SameTime provides several extensions to allow even greater access to messaging on the move. The Sametime SIP Gateway supports SIMPLE. As other instant messaging vendors such as AOL and Microsoft begin to support SIMPLE, you will be able to connect your Sametime community with third-party SIP-enabled communities. IBM also offers SameTime Every Place (STEP), which provides WAP connectivity.
Microsoft Exchange 2000 Server
Microsoft's Instant Messaging Server is a part of the Exchange Server 2000 package. One of the (many) options you have when you install Exchange is the Instant Messaging Service, which provides the ability for the server to act as an Instant Messaging Home Server, Instant Messaging Router, or both. A Home Server is used to house users, while a Router is used to send messages off to other servers.
You can setup the instant messaging server as intranet only or Internet capable.
Microsoft's IM Client is of course the ubiquitous MSN Messenger, installed with just about every Windows desktop on the planet. It is clean, simple, easy to use and familiar to many millions of users worldwide.
Looking ahead, part of the Microsoft roadmap is the -Greenwich" IM system, which is part of the .NET Web services strategy. One of the features of Greenwich is its logging capability, which allows users to see instant messaging conversations they've had in the past. In fact, there are some industry segments in which that is a regulatory requirementââ,¬"financial services or medical services, for example, are required to keep records of all written correspondence.
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