AOL, Webex Collaborate On Collaboration
America Online and Webex are teaming up on Web-based conferencing.
The two companies hope to parlay their respective strengths in instant messaging and Web conferencing/white boarding in a low-cost "Aim Pro" subscription service for businesses that combines both sets of functionality.
"Many service providers are rolling out hosted EIM offerings with a goal to address the market for outsourcing corporate communication infrastructure," said Antepo CEO Maxime Seguineau via e-mail.
"Their value proposition is to take away the complexity that comes with securing and managing corporate communication applications, which IM falls under. With the advanced compliance and network hygiene features of the Akonix server, they can host OPN System-based real-time communication offerings with the appropriate level of spam, virus and malicious attack protection, combined with advanced compliance monitoring features."
The result will be a new IM client, AIM Pro,, that will resemble a user's current AOL instant messenger box, that can be used to quickly create online conferences that are fully encrypted, and also archived, audited, and logged for compliance reasons.
The underlying infrastructure pairs AOL's IM network, including its "clearinghouse servers" that provide protocol translation between AIM, ICQ and Apple iChat users and outside IM networks, as well as Webex' Mediatone network.
"We would expect people to replace their current AIM client " with an AimPro superset of it, said Brian Curry, vice president of premium and subscription services for America Online, Dulles, Va.
The service, now in early test phase, would also offer VoIP-based audio conferencing, video as well as calendaring integration, executives from both companies said. It would also work with an enterprise's existing directories. The goal is to make it easier for business users to communicate with coworkers or colleagues outside the firewall without having to wangle special IT permission to do so.
While IM—from market-leader AOL, as well as Microsoft, Yahoo, and now Google—has taken the consumer world by storm, many companies have not yet deployed "business-grade" offerings with the security mandated by new regulations. Microsoft offers such a service in Live Communications Server, and IBM with Sametime.
The new AOL-Webex network would provide linkage to AOL's existing IM federation partners, which include IBM, Microsoft, Parlano, Antepo, Jabber, Omnipod, Reuters, and other IM players.
Both companies—and eventually their partners—will be able to sell the subscription service, slated to debut formally at the end of the second quarter. Pricing was not disclosed but both Curry and Bill Heil, president and COO of Webex, maintained that it will be an inexpensive monthly subscription.
ISV partners, for example, could embed this new service in their own line-of-business or other applications to offer an integral on-demand type of conferencing, Heil noted.
The beauty of their vision is that a user with this service, could ping buddies on the consumer IM networks and initiate a secure conference, Curry said.
The alliance could be seen as the companies' concerted response to Microsoft, which fields LCS in the AIM space and Live Meeting in the hosted conferencing/meeting arena.
In other IM news, Akonix and Antepo are working together so that Akonix' has L7 Enterprise IM management tool work will workwith Antepo's OPN System, bolstering the security and compliance capabiliies of the business IM system.
San Diego-based Akonix competes with vendors like IMLogic, now being acquired by Symantec and Facetime Communications who bolster even instant messaging with security and archiving tools. Antepo, New York, offers its own "carrier-grade" IM for businesses which vies with Microsoft LCS and IBM Sametime.