Corporations need to control that interaction.” Microsoft said its offering trumps AOL’s in a number of places.
“Businesses want to use IM to communicate with customers and right now they are doing that with AOL and MSN. “I see this as mainly a reaction to AOL,” says David Ferris, president of Ferris Research.
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In October, Yahoo said it also would offer enterprise support for its IM service.Īll of the providers are looking for ways to generate revenue from their IM services, which are free and have taken off like wildfire. That same survey showed that 60% of company’s use AOL Instant Messenger, while 50% use MSN Messenger and 45% Yahoo Messenger.ĪOL last week offered its own AIM Enterprise Gateway for companies looking to manage its IM service. Instant messaging is used either sanctioned or unsanctioned in 84% of companies with that number expected to climb to 93% in 12 months, according to a September survey of 196 respondents by Osterman Research. Microsoft is reacting to the intense popularity of instant messaging and its grass roots explosion in corporations, where network executives are scrambling to manage its use. Users will have to run Windows 2000 and SQL Server 2000 to support the logging and auditing features. The gateway will listen for the MSNMP instant messaging protocol and log those conversations. Microsoft has asked those vendors to integrate the Passport application-programming interface into their products so that Active Directory can be linked with the Passport service. “We are providing the enterprise with a variety of management tools to use instant messaging with external customers,” says Larry Grothaus, lead product manager for MSN.Īs part of the service, users will have to deploy a third-party gateway from IMLogic or FaceTime Communications for managing IM traffic.