Antepo, Spyrus To Pair On Secure Instant Messaging For Business
Spyrus will use Antepo's secure IM technology in its own cryptographic systems, both companies said. Spyrus makes hardware-based security and identity management systems for government and corporate accounts.
"We provide granular authentication to let instant messaging work for disparate groups through firewalls and different levels of classification," said Rich Skibo, director of business development for San Jose-based Spyrus.
Antepo got the nod because it fields "carrier-class IM", Skibo said. "This is very important because the Department of Defense is migrating to a net-centric environment in which war and other personnel need secure access to information and have to [also] literally create ad hoc collaboration," he noted.
Syntegra, the systems integration arm of British Telecom, is already embedding Antepo in its trading floor systems used by financial institutions.
"In wholesale trading, the focus is on secure messaging with order trails all integrated with the dealer board so organizations can communicate with customers securely and archivably over the phone and IM," said Tim Furmidge, Business Development Director at BT Syntegra.
With enterprise IM rapidly becoming a race between behemoths IBM/Lotus' Sametime and Microsoft Live Communications Server (LCS), some might wonder if Antepo will be a viable choice for organizations. But CEO Maxime Seguineau says Antepo's advantage is its openness--it supports both the SIMPLE (SIP for Instant Messaging and Presence Leverage) and XMPP (Extensible Messaging and Presence Protocol) standards.
And, he maintains, some customers prefer to deal with a vendor that's not trying to sell the rest of its own software stack.
"We don't force any changes today or tomorrow. Microsoft LCS requires Win 2003 and Lotus only works with its own ecosystem. We will work with whatever database or directory customers have," Seguineau said. He also maintains that Antepo's marquee customer list, which includes Merrill Lynch and Sprint, is comforting to other potential accounts.