Not too long ago it was AOL, Yahoo, and Microsoft gearing up to see who would win the IM enterprise market. Now the only one left in the game is Microsoft. Last week Yahoo announced that they would not be entering the enterprise IM market, and now AOL has done the same. It"s interesting that these two companies left Microsoft alone and unchallenged in this market.
The exodus of instant messaging service providers from the enterprise software market continued Monday, when America Online Inc. (AOL) announced plans to abandon its AIM Enterprise Gateway product and migrate users of that product to a similar one from IMlogic Inc. AOL nemesis Yahoo Inc. on Friday made a similar move when it decided to discontinue Yahoo Business Messenger, an instant messaging service designed for corporate use.
The reasoning from both companies is similar: They"re interested in the corporate market but prefer to focus on providing the instant messaging service and not the software corporations need to manage their employees" instant messaging use. Millions of people at home and at work use the free instant messaging services from Yahoo, AOL and Microsoft Corp. Specific requirements from corporations to audit and manage their employees" instant messaging use prompted the creation of so-called gateway software.