AOL Extends AIM Interoperability

[Jeff]

by Jeff Hester

America Online has announced a program to extend AIM and ICQ interoperability with several enterprise instant messaging (EIM) products from other vendors. This appears to be a preemptive move against Microsoft, who has been working to establish similar interoperability through their forthcoming Live Communications Server (LCS).

Through AOL's Enterprise Federation Partner (EFP) program, users of various EIM products will be able to add AIM and ICQ users to their IM contact lists and vice versa, allowing them to exchange messages without setting up accounts on the various IM networks.

Interoperability has been the holy grail of instant messaging, and long been a sticking point for adoption of instant messaging in the workplace. When employees need to communicate outside of the company, proprietary IM networks often make communication difficult. By enabling interoperability across one of the largest public IM networks, AOL removes that barrier.

AOL has announced four initial partners: Antepo, Jabber, Omnipod and Parlano. Partners in the program pay AOL an annual royalty for each of their customers that is allowed to connect to AIM. The annual fee lets the users send unlimited instant messages to as many AIM users as they like.

Currently the EFP program will allow interoperability, but with constraints. For example, a Jabber or Omnipod user can exchange messages with an AIM user, but a Jabber user cannot currently exchange messages with an Omnipod user, even though both companies are partners in the EFP program. AOL plans to extend the program to allow translation of messages across protocols in the future.

So why would a corporation pay for the privilege of interoperability with AIM and ICQ when those programs are available for free? Control and accountability. More and more industries are now track and control communications due to regulatory requirements. The EFP program helps those companies maintain control while extending functionality outside the firewall.

[Fanatic]

Where is IBM Lotus Sametime in this announcement? Sametime has held a large share of the EIM market for many years. Does this signal a shift in the balance of power?