America Online Inc yesterday made its long-anticipated foray into enterprise-grade instant messaging, with the release of an AOL Instant Messenger enterprise server and developers" kit, backed up by a support program, writes Kevin Murphy.
The offering boosts AOL"s software division, comprised of its Strategic Business Solutions division and developers from the old iPlanet and Netscape, which will be supporting developers that choose to license the technology to build applications that use the AIM network as a presence backbone.
AIM Enterprise Gateway is the main deliverable announced yesterday. Already available, the product adds much-needed manageability to AIM services. Administrators can log, restrict, route and monitor IM message sessions and create period reports.
The server, based largely on technology from FaceTime Communications Inc, has an optional Private Domain Service with Federated Authentication, which allows users to be identified by screen names that resemble email addresses and are authenticated on the corporate directory.
The main lacking in the first release is security. Encryption is not possible in the current version of the client, though an encryption-enabled client, which uses software from VeriSign Inc, is currently under development and released as beta software.