Message Received

Instant messaging allows users to create their own communities of colleagues and communicate without threat of spam. But because of its origin as a consumer product, it also poses a potential security risk and lacks the archiving and reporting capabilities now mandated in many corporate environments.

Linqware is the latest company attempting to field an IT-palatable instant-messaging offering with Collabrix, available now. Linqware fashioned the Collabrix user interface after popular consumer offerings such as AOL Instant Messenger (AIM) but adds archiving and 40- and 128-bit SSL security "end to end," said Tod Turner, CEO of the Kirkland, Wash.-based company.

Message threads are stored in a SQL Server database for archiving,an important consideration now that the Securities and Exchange Commission has ordered financial-services companies to track e-mail. Those threads also can be useful for keeping workgroup members up to speed on what transpired in online meetings.

Unlike consumer offerings, Collabrix prevents users from adding to a "buddy list" unless that person gives permission. And users can also assign buddies to more than one buddy list, Turner said.

id
unit-1659132512259
type
Sponsored post

Linqware, a Citrix Systems Alliance partner, plans to use the Citrix channel to penetrate the market. Solution providers can configure Collabrix and Citrix Metaframe to offer application-sharing launched from instant-messaging sessions, for example.

Lesley Taufer, president of Boulder, a Citrix partner in Boulder, Colo., is bullish on the product. "We're always looking for ways to leverage Citrix. We work with Softricity, another Citrix Alliance partner that offers a streaming application, and we've leveraged that in nearly every account," she said.

Collabrix, which will be offered in hosted and non-hosted form, costs from $4 to $12 per user per month.

Mike Osterman, president of Osterman Research, said as of March, only 24 percent of corporations had settled on a corporate standard for instant messaging.

But other analysts say corporate instant messaging is poised to take off.

Many IT departments are "proactively soliciting private [instant-messaging networks, and we expect to see in the next two years quite a bit of private [instant-messaging usage coming into large enterprises," said Matt Cain, vice president of Meta Group.

Dave Malys, director of IT for Miralink Group, said the Jacksonville, Fla.-based Linqware beta tester had been blocking employees' use of AIM and Yahoo Messaging. "You can easily get viruses coming in. . . . Linqware gets rid of that concern," he said.

Other vendors are also beefing up their instant-messaging wares.

IBM's Lotus Software Group launched Sametime, a secure corporate instant-messaging offering, in early 1999 and now claims 6 million users. Sametime Version 3, due later this year, adds file-transfer capability and better management tools, said Jeremy Dies, offerings manager at Lotus.

Akonix Systems says its new L7 software will add security to existing instant-messaging applications.

AOL Time Warner is also rumored to be mulling a corporate version of AIM, its market-leading product.

MARIO MOREJON contributed to this story.