Microsoft Boasts AOL, Yahoo Interop Win For Live Communications Server 2005

Live Communications Server 2005

Microsoft's upcoming LCS 2005 now promises to ease interoperability with AOL Instant Messenger (AIM), AOL ICQ, Yahoo Messenger as well as Microsoft's own MSN users.

But the news will affect only a tiny portion of the hundreds of millions of IM users out there, the vast majority of which use free, consumer-based IM clients running on one of the three public IM networks, MSN, AOL, or Yahoo.

America Online, still viewed as the consumer IM market leader, has traditionally put the kibosh on interoperability between its millions of consumer users and the rest of the IM arena, citing privacy concerns and the need to control Spim, the spam analog in the IM world. But a world in which more than one hundred million casual IM users can communicate across all three services is still not in the cards.

Now, users with LCS will be able to add AIM and ICQ buddies to their buddy lists and see their presence, said Brian Curry, senior director of AIM Network Services, Dulles, Virg.

"Let me be real explicit. This is not interoperability between the AOL consumer network and the MSN network and the Yahoo network. Instead, it's an option for purchasers of Microsoft's enterprise product, LCS 2005. Businesses who buy that and the people who install and deploy it for those businesses can use its federation feature to connect to the public networks so enterprise users logging onto LCS can put AIM buddies into their buddy list," he said.

To make this deal happen, the two companies worked out operational and technical issues to prevent spread of viruses and spim and devise a business model that accommodates all parties, according to AOL. In short, a company who runs a public IM network will be compensated for its use. Microsoft will offer an "interoperability SKU" above and beyond its LCS client and server SKUs and will pay out royalties to AOL and Yahoo based on the sale of that. One source said AOL will become a clearinghouse between dispersed LCS servers.

This deal represents something of a loss for IBM's Lotus Software group which tested, with AOL's blessing, interoperability between its Sametime corporate instant messaging and AOL. That test ended with the last release of Sametime, Curry said.

AOL continues to talk with everyone about interoperability matters, he added.

IBM Lotus, however, downplayed the announcement. "From an enterprise IM perspective, there is not a current requirement for interoperability with these IMs," said Penny Scharfman, IBM's program director for Workplace Collaboration products. IBM/Lotus claims some 11 million Sametime seats.

Others say the writing is on the wall for better interoperability for corporate IM users. "I suspect IBM and others will have to announce similar kinds of things," said Dmitry Shapiro, founder and CTO of Akonix Systems, a provider of security, archiving, and logging services for corporate IM.

Both Shapiro and Christopher Dean, senior vice president of marketing and business development for FaceTime Communications, Foster City, Calif., say this news validates corporate instant messaging as a viable business.

"This further legitimizes the use of IM [in business] and will rapidly increase adoption," Dan said.

Dean also said industry players, including Yahoo, Microsoft, AOL and IBM/Lotus, have converged around the SIP protocol which should further ease interoperability going forward.

"This is bad news for XMPP [Extensible Messaging and Presence Protocol] a rival protocol used by Jabber and which the IETF has ratified. The industry has moved on," Dean said.

Many solution providers say that wider adoption of IM in businesses provides them with a viable opportunity to sell security and other value-added services. FaceTime, Akonix, and Boston-based IMLogic all offer such services to be integrated with existing IM implementations.

Rob Wolfe, president of solution provider AvcomEast, Silver Spring, Md., often installs FaceTime in corporate accounts, for example. The advent of new securities and privacy rules and regulation means that companies already permeated with instant messaging need to protect themselves by making sure the communications are secure, archived, and logged.

"IM is out of control and cannot be effectively handled by the standard network infrastructure," Wolfe told CRN last month, via AIM. "FaceTime licenses technology from the major IM companies and knows how to manage their communication."