http://www.tomshardware.com/2007/0 [...] index.html

Instant messaging is providing a useful alternative to e-mail and telephone communications for more and more businesses. We give you the inside scoop on how things stand in the IM world...

Why was Microsoft's Office Communicator ignored? Our company has been using that since it's release. This is stinkin' rediculous. I have been a Tom's reader for over 10 years, and every day I become more disappointed.

I've used Jive Messenger (Wildfire, Openfire) for many years very successfully in a couple different companies, as well as on my home servers. I have MSN, ICQ, IRC, Asterisk-IM, AIM, and Yahoo support at the server so all I need is Spark (or any Jabber only client) on the users computers. I personally use Pidgin, previously Gaim, (why all the name changes?) at home, but spark is on all my laptops since I can easily connect to my home server and have access to ALL my accounts very easily.

I tried Office Comm, boy it sucks, it's not nearly as configurable and it's got a much higher resource need at the server. Typical MS crap; course I also use Exchange The hardest part of Openfire is getting LDAP setup with Windows Server 2003 Domains, and that only takes 5 minutes! The Asterisk support rocks BTW.

Don't forget sametime!!!!!!! IBM RULZZZ

what about Qnext?

it has secure file sharing, encryption, collaberation etc..

lets do some research b4 we post an artical leaving so much out

You do an article on business IM and don't mention the best corporate IM that is Microsoft's Live Communications Server? With the ability to use TLS for security, archiving of IMs for SOX compliance, and federation services for mobility.

What about Microsoft Live Communication Server or the next Microsoft Office Communication Server? And what about Skype?

This is a really incomplete article about Business IM

In my opinion a well informed article albeit all the above comments are valid - there are more fish in the sea...and not ALL from your side of the Pond.

Go be our guest take a look at Networker Business/Enterprise Unified Communications. We just starting to kick a bit o' *** o'er here and would love to o'er there!

Networker = Secure, recorded IM, eMeeting, built-in Softphone (eat your heart out Skype), RSS reader, secure links vault and corporate push, Public IM gateways, AV as standard, Mobile clients (Blackberry and J2ME), WebIM and Installed Client access option and all networks delivered hosted SaaS that you control or (if you are big enough) deployed system.

No firewall issues, boundaries are exactly what your organization wants them to be, (sorry MS LCS) control is whoever you set to administrate it, accountability and auditing as standard capabilities means if people misbehave on Public IM they can be restricted to Networker.

http://www.presence-networks.net

Deployment and provisioning for 1000 users? Give us a couple of days to make sure your logo looks nice and the notifications are exactly as YOU want them and then a day to train your IT people to manage it.

Authentication, control, accountability and security...welcome to Presence Networks Networker environment
50 - 500,000. So by all means be our guest for a test account and drop us a note if you want a pilot network set-up. Go on you might even like it!