IBM Brings IM Together

An anonymous reader writes "At their Lotusphere conference, IBM announced IM interoperability with AOL Instant Messenger, Yahoo!, and Google Talk, to be shipped in the next release of its Sametime enterprise IM/web conferencing product in mid-2006." The omission of Microsoft's instant messenger seemed to raise quite a few questions, however.

Comments

Sametime

[ender81b]

Sametime is actually a fairly nifty little app. It's got far better integration with notes than - say messenger does with Outlook. The ability to important groups from your address book, open a chat based on an email, schedule a web based conferenced, program bots to interface with a Lotus Notes database, etc is fairly cool.

The old version always supported an OSCAR gateway, but it's nice to have it "fully" compatible without a whole lotta effort.

Already here

[ericdano]

Let see, we already have all this with Trillian and Adium. Why do I need IBM doing it?

Re:Already here

[QQoicu2]

Uhh, cuz Trillian is hideous. Personally I use gaim ported for WinXP, but GTK+ is pretty buggy with a lot of XP stuff (transparency, et al). I'm more than open to any new multi-network IM clients.

Re:Already here

[Anonymous Coward]

Let see, we already have all this with Trillian and Adium. Why do I need IBM doing it?

Because, as nice as those applications are, they require you to have separate accounts. is proposing an IM interopability gateway for Sametime - so you won't need a AIM or Yahoo account to talk to someone on their networks.

Re:Already here

[Otter]

The point of SameTime that the summary glossed over is that it's an IM component of Lotus Notes, and is integrated with the rest of the Notes environment. Also, it's a desktop sharing tool (like WebEx). Obviously this wouldn't be news if it were just a cross-network IM client.

SameTime is easily the nicest component in the Notes suite, although anything that doesn't make you want to smash your skull through the monitor would qualify for that honor.

Re:Already here

[raadradd]

And Miranda IM.

Re:Already here

[Penguin Programmer]

Programs like Trillian and GAIM are handy and work fairly well, but if you want to have your IM set up in more than one place (say at home, at work and at school), you have to set up every account you have in each location.

A much better solution is Jabber with transports. My AIM and MSN settings and buddylists are saved on the Jabber server, and all I have to do is login to my Jabber account. Considering the multitude of Jabber clients available (open protocol for the win!), this is a much easier system for those of us who regularly use computers in more than one location.

Re:Already here

[99BottlesOfBeerInMyF]

Let see, we already have all this with Trillian and Adium. Why do I need IBM doing it?

The difference is one is a client and one is a server/service. Ideally, IM will become like e-mail using standard protocols. Anyone can check any server using any client. In the beginning this was not the case, until the major players agreed to start using standards. Now you can use mutt or outlook access e-mail from AOL or Comcast using SMTP and POP hosted on Sendmail or Communigate.

This is IBM saying that their service and servers and client will all start recognizing the SIP standard. This means you can get messages from users of IBM's service even if you are using Trillian with your AIM account. Further, if you are using IBM's service, you won't need to sign up for multiple accounts with AOL, ICQ, Yahoo, etc. to be able to chat with people using those services. With Google, IBM, AOL, Yahoo all starting to provide interoperability we are finally starting to get out of walled gardens and moving towards open, interoperable standards. This is very good news for anyone who uses IM and would like it to be more useful and have more possible people they can contact and it is good news for people running secure IM servers using IBM software. They will not be able to communicate with the outside world.

Note, all of this excepts MSN who don't believe in open standards of communication or something.

ICT?

[darkmayo]

Sounds like the inhouse app that IBM people made "IBM Community Tools", Sametime backend with MSN, Yahoo, AOL functionality along with tons of really cool stuff and community building. (Skilltap for the win)

Bit of a resource hog but it is pretty nice.

If they are releasing this for public consumption I think it would be a good idea.

Re:all I have to say is

[un1xl0ser]

I agree.

IBM should put all of their effort (and donate Sametime specs/source) to the meanwhile project. People could then create GAIM plugins, or just link their custom code to the meanwhile library.

This is what IBM told me to use when I complained about their lack of a Linux Sametime client @ Linuxworld 2005 (Boston). It was durring their "Linux on the desktop" panel, which was kind of ironic.

wrong

[Kwiik]

Because this is a corporate suite that also allows you to gather your co-workers together locally, without them needing to be on any other IM service. and for the record, having used this at IBM, I can tell you that you DO need accounts for all of the other services.. and, actually, MSN integration is in at IBM, it's just not going out on production for licensing reasons.

Re:all I have to say is

[perdelucena]

There is a myriad of SameTime Clients for Linux: ICT, Sanity, SameTime (on Wine), Meanwhile plugin for GAIM, SameTime plugin for workplace....