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Enterprise IM?
Jsf72672 asks: "With the recently-passed Sarbanes-Oxley legislation, and the looming HIPAA compliance requirements a constant thorn in the side of IT staff, Enterprise Instant Messaging seems to be overlooked. Most users are using AIM or MSN. Microsoft and Yahoo! both have products tailored to the Enterprise, but no one wants to rely their technology to keep them out of jail, or from paying huge fines. Jabber looks attractive but our already overtaxed IT staff does not have the time to compile, secure and test homegrown solutions. What are Slashdot-reading IT Managers doing? I found these guys and their InterIM line of products, and they look pretty good. Is anyone using them? Are there other low-cost solutions you have employed?"
the last two companies I've worked for have had Lotus Sametime. Not sure about licensing or whatnot, but it works.
There's a commercial version of Jabber at Jabber.com. It has support and was designed for enterprise use.
New legislation to get healthcare providers to secure patient records. BIg pain in the patoot, speaking as someone who had to sit through several long ass meetings about it earlier this week.
Bottom line is, there should be no way for patient data to "escape" from the networks of a healthcare provider. THis includes machines with no removable storage (yes, I'm serious), no phone conversations about the data in common areas, etc. etc. etc. A lot of it is commonsense security, some of it is "WTF?", and all of it is a pain to retrofit into preexisting systems. Believe me.
El riesgo vive siempre!
Trillian is a great IM app because of its ability to incorporate MSN, AIM, ICQ, Yahoo, and IRC chat networks. They also have a great skin in Microscopic.
I've needed to update it once in a year due to changes to MSN. But its been pretty dependable
Go Gusties
Actually it's the other way around, AIM is based on code licensed from Lotus.
Here is a Special Report from eWeek on Enterprise IM and it has some good reviews and articles including
Corporate IM Solutions
Instant Messaging in the Enterprise
To see a world in a grain of sand, and then to step back and see the beach where the sand lies
Only problem is, the free Jabber has a number of bugs, and isn't really built for an enterprise deployment. It lacks support for integration into existing directories and authentication structures, an easy mechanism for pre-populating buddy lists, and many other "corporate" features and services.
As it happens, most missing features are available in the commercial jabber.com release, which costs big big bucks.. thousands to tens of thousands for licensing, plus annual fees of around ten bucks per user.
I do not deploy Linux. Ever.
It's like IRC, but with public key encryption built in from the ground up. And All SILC software is Open Source (GPL).
So far, the only complaint I've received is the lack of a good MS-Windows client.
The X and text clients for Unix are usable, and there's even an Irssi module. but the Windows clients lack the polished user interface that people have come to expect from their Microsoft-centric chat services.
BTW, SILC Client 1.0.1 was released this week.
I do not deploy Linux. Ever.
I beg to differ.
Given the context of the original question, being the "Enterprise", I would argue that "thousands to tens of thousands for licensing" is actually fairly cheap. This isn't big big bucks by enterprise standards at all. It's chicken feed.
For a third party company to provide a supported solution which keeps you in compliance, I'd bet Enterprise companies would pay far more.
The other SILC clients available for MS-Windows are GUI win32 binarie with a point-n-click interface with graphical icons. In some ways this is worse, since the icon imagery in some clients doesn't seem to have any relationship to what the buttons actually do!
Exactly. And while there are GUI clients for SILC on Windows, they are still the most unattractive chat clients I've ever seen.I do not deploy Linux. Ever.
When would files normally "go through AOL's servers"? Since we're on the subject of Instant Messaging, I assume you're talking about AOL IM. Using AIM's file transfer feature does NOT send the files through AOL's servers. It merely sends the file directly from the sender's machine to the recipient's machine.
it's just a rebranded version of MSN Messenger. Same shit, different wrapping
The "standalone client" uses the MSN interface with a custom backend to handle the crypto, logging, etc. The real RM is a pane in a trading workstation.