Enterprise instant messengers make the grade

Few things in life are more frustrating than not being able to contact someone you need to talk to right away. If there’s one reason behind the success of IM in business, it’s that you have one more way to get through. Presence indicators show who’s online and who’s not, and just a click on a contact list makes brief exchanges faster and easier than picking up the phone. No wonder IM has spread like wildfire and free IM services from AOL, Yahoo, and MSN have joined the list of technologies that captured users at home and followed them to the office.

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Unfortunately, public IM services, which are easy and effective for home use, are worrisome for enterprise IT. Even if an organization can live without centrally administered buddy lists, public IM can open up dangerous security holes in a corporate network. Because message traffic is sent unencrypted, public systems can be hacked, identities can be spoofed, and conversations can be intercepted by packet-sniffing worms. Any company that wants both IM and secure communications should consider adopting an enterprise IM solution.

We tested four solutions in this roundup — Lotus Instant Messaging and Web Conferencing 3.1, Microsoft Live Communications Server 2003, Novell GroupWise Messenger 1.0, and Jabber XCP (Extensible Communications Platform) 2.7 — and found that enterprise IM solutions provide the security, manageability, and auditing capabilities that companies need. And they also include features, ranging from transaction logging to document collaboration, that will support business processes in the enterprise. All four of these products enhance security through full encryption of traffic streams, providing the ultimate protection for traffic that traverses public data links. Each integrates with directory services such as Active Directory, LDAP, and RADIUS, giving administrators the ability to control user population and privileges, and allowing users to share a central contact list across the organization.

The solutions also allow administrators to create and manage a central archive of messages and conversations, providing the auditing capabilities necessary, for example, to ensure accountability or comply with Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) requirements or Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPPA) responsibilities.

The IM products from IBM Lotus, Microsoft, and Novell also integrate with their respective collaboration platforms. If you’ve committed to a particular vendor’s groupware, very likely you’ll be best served by their enterprise IM solution. On the other hand, there are other options to consider depending on whether you want application sharing or whiteboarding with IM, and what flavor of directory services runs in your infrastructure.

IBM Lotus Instant Messaging and Web Conferencing

IBM Lotus Instant Messaging and Web Conferencing (formerly called Sametime) is an old friend to many Lotus Notes and Domino users. Over the years, Sametime enabled people to have spontaneous communications or scheduled online meetings through the Notes client. In our testing of Version 3.1, this update works almost as well when removed from Lotus’ groupware applications. With the flexibility to connect users outside the enterprise (a feature shared by the other products in this roundup), better security and usability, and well-rounded platform support, this solution merits serious consideration for enterprises with assorted e-mail and application servers.

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Lotus Instant Messaging and Web Conferencing runs on top of Domino, which adds a few setup steps, but nothing arduous. Testing in a Microsoft Windows 2000 Server environment, we started by installing and configuring Domino 6.0.3 followed by the Lotus Instant Messaging application server. With dialogs prompting us most of the way, Lotus IM was running within an hour.

Managing the Lotus IM server was straightforward using the Lotus Instant Messaging Administration Tool (an HTML- and XML-based application). We had no trouble connecting to Domino and LDAP directories and then specifying access privileges for employees listed. Similarly, we manually added new users, monitored different services (such as Web meeting and audio/video), and charted user activity levels.

Although dated in appearance, the Lotus IM client functioned well. With but a few clicks, we created buddy lists by department and saw who was available to chat.

All IM sessions and everyday tasks such as creating meeting invitations open in new windows, eating up valuable screen space. But balancing this annoyance, the product’s IP audio and video components are H.323-compliant, which allows Lotus users to communicate with partners running Microsoft NetMeeting. In addition, Version 3.1 introduces file sharing, but allows you to send only one file to one person at a time.