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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.
IIRC Lotus Notes (an IBM product) supports an instant messageing system called "Sametime."
How much more enterprise savy could you need?
Wheeeee
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.
I am getting ready to set up a print house up with 12 OSX workstations and they are very interested in using iChat not just communicate in their office, but since they will be using the Rendevous side of iChat also, they will be able to move large files around easily as well, without the files having to go through AOL's servers.
In addition, one of the main things they want is accountability, phone calls (unless you record and index them all) are really very temporary, while iChats can be saved and searched.
On a side note, I was thinking networking at least 5 of the comps that are in close proximity together using Firewire Over IP, but having done a short test between two comps using that setup, i got no better than a pitiful 60KB/ sec, what is up with that?
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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.
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.
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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.
Get certified as HIPPA compliant by some scamming agency like TruSecure. They'll spend fifteen minutes onsite, take you to a nice lunch, then rubber stamp you as certified and send you a cool plaque. Tell all your customer's that you're "Certified". Then, keep instant messaging and sending unencrypted email like you always have. When you get busted for a HIPPA violation, sue the FUCK out of your certifying agency, since they "audited" your compliance measures. The extra $$$ you make off the lawsuits should buy you a nice iPod.
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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
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Low cost it probably is not. And the client software sucks, be nice if they had at least 1/2 the functionality of Gaim.
The Deviant Tech., products looks interesting and is probably cheaper than Sametime. There is an interesting article here
If you already have existing contacts w/ IBM U might be able to leverage them to get a deal on Sametime, especially if you have Deviant Catalog sitting on your desk. ;) Deviant looks almost like an applicance type of idea and looks worth investigating.
For those who don't know, companies in the Financial Sector are now being required to same all e-mail, and IM communications for employees responsible for Financial decisions. In other words the Mutual Fund manager has all her communications recorded, but the lad cleaning the bog (loo/toilet/john ...) does not.
I believe that this data has to be saved for seven years (or five or something). From what I've heard it's a tremendous amount of data. Where I work there are thousands of employees whose e-mail & IM have to be saved. We talking many terabytes of data here and it's a real nightmare. Thankfully I'm not involved in that!
It will interesting to hear which solution you use, how easy it is to set up and run, and how the users like.
Afraid I have to post Anon, part of working for big Fin companies is not talking about what their infrastructure, or at least not telling which company's infrastructure one's referring to! Luck!
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.
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.
The guys you mentioned, Deviant, were at LinuxWorld in SF. They're running Jabber in a Shuttle case, with a bunch of extra logging and retention tricks. So you'd get the open standards and full support at the same time, for what I thought was a great price.
That said, it was too expensive for my client, who is now using a basic Jabber setup...
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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.
ApplianSys in the UK do a Jabber server appliance - The IMbox200.
This kind of thing has to be a good option for people not confident at rolling their own, or for the enterprise that wants a solution that's easily supportable.
Just being able to plug a black-box into your network and have it authenticate with existing systems has got to be a bonus.
Reuters Messaging. Specifically designed for the corporate user, with encryption, logging, resilience, etc etc.
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.
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.