Advertisment

AOL takes messaging services to corporates

author-image
CIOL Bureau
Updated On
New Update

By Reshma Kapadia



NEW YORK: America Online, the consumer-oriented Internet arm of AOL Time Warner Inc., is entering the corporate marketplace with the launch on Monday of new instant messaging services for businesses. The online giant is trying to build on the popularity of its free AIM messaging service, which has 180 million registered users, to move into the corporate world with paid messaging services that give companies more control and security.



"We are looking at AOL as a communications company and very much a leader in IM -- having been a pioneer -- and seeing our user base, which clearly has consumer roots, evolve to having a significant level of AIM adoption within the workplace," said Bruce Stewart, senior vice president of AOL Strategic Business Solutions, in an interview.



Stewart said about 59 percent of businesses that have instant messaging (IM) are using AIM. The online giant's enterprise AIM service allows businesses manage the use of IM in their enterprise. The messaging service, which sits behind a company's firewall, lets businesses monitor instant messages by logging, auditing and creating reports on instant messages.



America Online has also been testing a version of the AIM service that allows for encrypted messaging, offering a higher level of security. That feature will be built into the AIM service by the first quarter of next year, Stewart said.



AOL is also in talks to create commercial pacts with developers that would let them embed AIM inside applications -- in essence licensing AIM client and AIM presence, Stewart said. AOL plans to license and sell subscriptions for the new product, charging $34 to $40 a person per year -- the more subscriptions bought, the lower the cost, according to a source familiar with the situation.



Competitive landscape



The enterprise messaging market is in its nascent stages, with IBM Corp.'s Lotus Sametime and Microsoft Corp.'s Exchange among the major players, analysts said. Ferris Research analyst Michael Sampson said there are about 10 million corporate instant messengers today.



"AOL is now seeking to leverage their customer base among individuals and segue into the IT departments," Sampson said. "They have a challenge ahead but they also have a significant natural advantage. AOL has covered most of the customer requirements: directory, logging and encryption."



The desire to boost revenue at a time companies like America Online and Yahoo Inc. have been hit by the advertising slump and other issues plays a role in the move, said Robert Mahowald, research manager at IDC. "Obviously, they have been spending money to build up their consumer base with an eye at the enterprise market," he added.



America Online's usual rivals are also looking at this market. Yahoo said earlier this month it would introduce an instant messaging service for businesses and said it plans to charge $30 per user per year. Microsoft is also trying to meet demands for corporate messaging and is working on a project code-named Greenwich to build architecture from the ground up that is targeted at the enterprise market and offers encryption and management tools, using a common standard.



"What we are driving to build is a foundational infrastructure within our products. The first application for it would be corporate instant messaging, but that is just the tip of the iceberg because you can bring in voice and video and rich media," said Microsoft's Bob O'Brien. "We are currently targeting delivering that architecture in the next Windows.net product in first half of 2003."



Currently businesses can do some management and tracking of messaging through Microsoft's Exchange offering but it is not built on the standards the software giant is moving toward.



"We currently have a leadership position- --from number of IM users within enterprise using AIM -- we are also announcing a product that is ready today that provides the functionality that companies want. They want a log; they want to leverage and utilize a single managed network infrastructure," Stewart said about competition.



(C) Reuters Ltd.

tech-news