MSN Messenger Connect Service

Thanks Ã‡®€Ã¥MhÃ¥©k€RÃ©Ã...Bridging its expertise in consumer and enterprise software, Microsoft Corp. today announced plans for the availability of its new MSN® Messenger Connect for Enterprises service. MSN Messenger Connect offers an enterprise a manageable way of doing business with its expanding external customer base utilizing instant messaging by logging and auditing conversations to a Microsoft® SQL Server (TM) 2000 database and providing administrative control of instant messaging namespaces for contact names within their organizations. The service represents a milestone in Microsoft's enterprise messaging strategy, currently code-named "Greenwich," as corporations invest in more-effective ways to directly communicate and perform transactions with their customers.

MSN Messenger Connect empowers businesses to communicate instantly with the more than 75 million unique end users of MSN Messenger, enabling, for example, brokers to share time-sensitive information with customers and clients to make purchases in real time. The new service delivers critical functionality to businesses such as logging and auditing of instant message communications with customers, capturing the data to provide a searchable record of transactions and instant message conversations. In addition, management and administration of user identities and namespaces for employees is provided to give greater assurance that customers are dealing with actual representatives of a particular company or organization.

The service, which will cost $24 annually per user with discounts for volume, provides an integrated experience with other Microsoft technologies, including the Windows® operating system and Active Directory® API, and with existing Exchange 2000 instant messaging services. In the future, MSN Messenger Connect will utilize Microsoft's integration of a comprehensive enterprise platform for real-time communications and collaboration into the Windows Server product family, code-named "Greenwich." MSN Messenger Connect will offer businesses an initial view of the type of real-time communications experience that will become available with "Greenwich."

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