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Enterprise IM?

Posted by Cliff on from the yet-another-excuse-to-drain-productivity dept.

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?"

7 of 73 comments (clear)

  1. Lotus Notes by heliocentric · · Score: 2, Insightful

    IIRC Lotus Notes (an IBM product) supports an instant messageing system called "Sametime."

    How much more enterprise savy could you need?

    --
    Wheeeee
  2. Hmmm... by Dr.+Photo · · Score: 2, Insightful

    When someone using Jsf72672@aol.com (a throwaway address if ever there was one) starts posting about some wonderful product he "found", it's almost certainly a company representative astroturfing, or trolling for hits.

    No offense intended if this "Jsf72672" is a real person's usual moniker, but it seems a bit suspicious. Caveat emptor.

  3. Take a better look at Jabber by jeremie · · Score: 5, Insightful

    It's not just open source, the XMPP protocol is approaching RFC status, and there is a whole suite of commercial products utilizing it.

    Just take a gander at the Sponsors box on jabber.org for starters. You'll find products that drop into almost any environment, are based on open technologies, and can be complimented by many hundreds of open source apps... what could be better?

    Closed IM systems are a thing of the past, if we want them to be.

    1. Re:Take a better look at Jabber by Earlybird · · Score: 4, Insightful
      I second the Jabber recommendation. "Homegrown" is a strange term to use for this technology, as there are many implementations, including mature, commercial products.

      My only problem with Jabber is the lack of a good MacOS X client. The only mature client, Psi -- which I use on Windows -- is a Qt app hastily ported to MacOS, and so it neither looks nor behaves like a native app. Not a big problem for me, personally, but my colleagues refuse to go near it.

  4. Re:What is HIPAA? by Kris_J · · Score: 2, Insightful

    Ah. I would tend to think that the only solution then would be to ban IM clients that require an off-site server and either use something like Jabber with a local server or as I suggested a closed, monitored IRC network.

  5. Jabber by Reality_X · · Score: 2, Insightful

    You don't need to compile, secure and test the thing.

    Just install an RPM and run a client.
    It'll take you all of 10 minutes.

  6. Re:Jabber.org=buggy ... jabber.com=overpriced by rgraham · · Score: 3, Insightful

    Do realize there is more than a single commerical vendor for Jabber? For instance Jive Messenger has an unlimited user license for $4500. Now granted you probably wouldn't want to handle 10,000+ users on a single Jive Messenger instance but there are less expensive options than Jabber Inc. However, with Jabber Inc's solution you can easily scale to hundreds of thousands of users, something that very few, if any, other IM products are capable of.