Sun Launches Instant Messaging Server

theIG writes "According to this article at geek.com, and another one at InternetWeek, Sun has shipped the first part of its new enterprise collaboration platform to compete with Exchange and Domino. Dubbed 'Sun ONE Instant Messaging 6.0,' this server will work with other products to be released in May, to allow a single login for all of its services that allow connections from outside a corporate firewall." Instant messaging is becoming increasingly popular in the workplace. Local messaging servers like this were only the next logical step for businesses which don't wish to rely on an outside network for their messaging.

Comments

irc?

[terminal96]

we have a company irc server where i work. works well enough.

Re:What's Wrong with Jabber?

[the uNF cola]

Jabber doesn't integrate with sun's other enterprise utility servers.

The platform, which consists of several separate server packages -- Sun ONE Messaging Server, Sun ONE Instant Messaging, Sun ONE Portal, Sun ONE Calendar Server, and Sun ONE Identity Server -- is available now and takes aim at rivals Microsoft and IBM/Lotus in the lucrative collaboration arena, said David Ferris, analyst with Ferris Research.

It's like wanting jabber to integrate with yahoo mail and yahoo calendar, along with the privacy.

Not to slam jabber at all, just the right tool for the right job, eh? Just one that requirs sun software :)

Real insightful, CowboyNeal

[p3d0]

Instant messaging is becoming increasingly popular in the workplace. Local messaging servers like this were only the next logical step for businesses which don't wish to rely on an outside network for their messaging.

Yeah, it was the next logical step several years ago. IBM has been using the Sametime IM internally for as long as I have worked there.

This should be alright...as long..

[Quass]

I work at a major corporation, and we use "Lotus Sametime" as our messenging client. At first I was put off by the lack of features (ie. timestamping, etc..) but it has interoperability with AIM, so I find it quite nice to use.

As long as Sun goes with something like AOL compatibility for outside-the-intranet communication, they should be sitting pretty. Why would this even be necessary? Well the obvious is chatting with friends/family - without having to install a secondary client - but, also I know in my company we deal with outside agencies and businesses, and its much easier being able to IM them, than to send emails, or phone.

Re:Cost and offering

[Henry Stern]

$3000 for 100 users is not only on par with the competition, but is small potatoes. A few years ago, I helped with a Domino/Notes/Sametime rollout where the server software before the CALs was well over five figures.

Jabber is only an IM service. Sun ONE is a whole enterprise collaboration environment. Comparing the two is like comparing KWord and Microsoft Office.

Wrong

[Andy Dodd]

As far as RH going straight from 8->9

If you were at all familiar with RedHat versioning, you'd know that all revisions within a major version are binary compatible with each other, and major versions are not guaranteed to be binary compatible with each other. (Some may work fine, other binaries won't. Mostly this pertains to C++ apps, but in RH9, this pertained to anything that used threading.) RedHat decided that it was best for the distribution to move to a new threading architecture. It happened that this new threading system broke binary compatibility with RedHat 8.

As a result, consistent with RedHat's versioning policies, it was called RedHat 9.

I will admit that it does have a fringe marketing benefit, but the main reason for 9 was that it broke binary compatibility with RH8.