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Users of IBM's Lotus Sametime software may be able to more easily communicate with the 195 million registered users of America Online's Instant Messenger under a new deal forged by the two companies.

Under the agreement, being announced Monday, the companies will test the capability of Sametime customers to communicate with users of the AIM Enterprise Gateway using one screen name, one password, and a consolidated contact list, the companies said.

"This is a trial about pooling communities of users together," said Bruce Stewart, AOL senior vice president of Strategic Business Solutions.

Compatibility with other instant messaging systems was one condition of AOL's merger with Time Warner in 2000. The company had announced it would seek interoperability with the Lotus product.

Enterprise Endeavor

The AIM Enterprise Gateway, launched last November, manages corporate IM use behind company firewalls, and serves as a proxy between business users and the outside AIM network. The company also offers a suite of corporate IM services, including a private domain service, directory authentication, and IM management, logging and monitoring capabilities.

The pilot tests are targeted at integrating the AIM Gateway and corporate IM services with Lotus Sametime's instant messaging and Web conferencing software.

AIM features are already integrated into the Sametime messaging client under a previous agreement, but users have to log into AIM using a different password, and the contact lists for the two systems are kept separate.

The new tests are aimed at providing a more seamless messaging experience by adding back-end integration, the companies said.

Keeping Track

If successful, 8 million Sametime customers would eventually be able to manage AIM usage on their systems. Also, IT managers would be able to log and monitor instant messages between the AOL and Sametime systems.

As instant messaging enjoys greater use in the workplace, tech managers are becoming concerned about monitoring its usage. The enterprise application of IM technology frequently builds in security features.

Stewart did not give a timeline of when he believes that the integration would be successful, saying only that the tests would take "months."

"We're hopeful. We just want to make sure it all works," he said.

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