AOL Readies Business-Friendly AIM

As corporate interest in instant messaging and presence-awareness technology escalates, widely-used consumer IM services are making a run at the enterprise with new security, management, and integration capabilities.

America Online is planning to soon announce its long-awaited enterprise push with the release of a server designed to add management control features and integration hooks to its AOL Instant Messenger service.

The move follows the launch of Yahoo's corporate IM service earlier in October. Microsoft plans to add corporate-friendly security and management features to its MSN Messenger in November.

AOL's AIM Enterprise Gateway server will provide existing AIM clients with features such as raffic management, message auditing and logging, and the ability to map user names to a corporate directory, according to sources familiar with AOL's plans.

More Secure

Sources said AOL's new server will be based on technology from FaceTime Communications, based in Foster City, California, which makes network-independent IM applications for businesses. FaceTime's products add regulatory compliance, IT control, and call-center interaction tools to IM. AOL will put a private label on FaceTime's technology platform and license it to customers.

Other features of the AIM Enterprise Gateway include an intranet traffic-management feature esigned to create a separate network for employee-to-employee communications behind the firewall.

The system can detect the ID of an AIM user to determine whether to route the traffic through the Internet to AOL's servers or to keep the communication within the corporate network. In addition, the server will include APIs designed to extend AOL's IM and presence technology to other applications.

Further out, AOL will release a secure IM client with encryption capabilities designed to connect with its Enterprise Gateway server.

As it broaches unfamiliar territory, AOL will head to market with a host of channel and system integrator partnerships designed to ease transition into the enterprise. VeriSign and FaceTime are lined up to resell the offering. AOL also plans to enlist help from a variety of system integrators, sources said.

Opening Up

And because AOL has backed down from an earlier promise to open its network to competitors via support for SIMPLE (Session Initiation Protocol for Instant Messaging and Presence Leveraging Extensions), the company's corporate thrust will include an interoperability effort spearheaded by partners who will provide access to AIM.

Yahoo's entry into the corporate space with its Yahoo Messenger Enterprise Edition 1.0 couples security and management features with the ability to communicate with the company's free Messenger client.

Due to ship in the first quarter of 2003, the corporate client will offer encryption based on SL, authentication and name/space control through corporate directories, and integration with auditing and virus protection tools. Yahoo also fielded support from Oracle, BEA Systems, Novell, and Sun Microsystems to help integrate Messenger Enterprise with corporate portals and directories.

AOL and Yahoo's plans are a natural extension of their IM capabilities, according to Michael Sampson, a research analyst at Ferris Research in San Francisco. "I think the way it will lay out over time is that an IT department will select a corporate platform [from IBM or Microsoft], but will seek tariff-based interoperability with the consumer networks," he said.