IMLogic is joining the move to provide network executives with more sophisticated tools to manage corporate use of instant messaging.
The company's IM Manager, being released this week, will provide corporations with the means to control and track usage of instant messaging, introduce security and policy compliance, and provide reporting and archiving features. The tool is an evolution of IMLogic's IMLog, which was built for Microsoft's Exchange 2000 and focused more on auditing than managing.
The server-based IM Manager is designed to support popular consumer and commercial IM products, including those from AOL, Lotus, Microsoft and Yahoo. It does not require any desktop software, which IMLogic officials say will ease corporate deployments and maintenance.
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The use of instant messaging is skyrocketing on corporate networks - business use is expected to rise from 65.5 million users today to 260 million by 2006, according to IDC. And the percentage of those using instant messaging for business is expected to rise from less than 40% worldwide today to nearly 90% by 2006.
Now that network executives realize they can't stem the growth, they are getting proactive about managing the use of the technology, and vendors are responding with products.
"What we will see in the development of the [instant messaging] industry is almost what we saw with e-mail," says Matt Cain, an analyst with Meta Group. He says the only difference is that the adoption rate will be much faster than it was with e-mail.
"Major vendors develop the core system but third parties will provide tools to manage those systems, such as archiving, naming standards and gateway services," he says.
Cain says once instant messaging standards emerge you'll see the major vendors add these features to their base platforms. Until that happens, IMLogic hopes IM Manager becomes the management platform of choice.
The software will compete with products from Akonix, FaceTime Communications and IM-Age. FaceTime last week added antivirus scanning to its platform in an alliance with Network Associates' McAfee Security division.
IM Manager provides usage control by integrating with any directory based on Lightweight Directory Access Protocol. The directory allows often cryptic instant messaging screen names to be matched with users listed in the directory so companies know who is using it. The directory's categorization of users into groups can be used to control access to instant messaging and to selectively archive instant messages by department or job function. IM Manager also lets users block file transfers and create reports that detail data such as average message size or usage by time of day or department.
IM Manager also connects with any Open Database Connectivity-compliant database for archived message storage.
The platform does not provide any gateway services to integrate disparate instant messaging platforms and will not offer virus scanning until a later version.
"This is purely a management infrastructure used to control the [instant messaging] pipe," says Francis deSouza, CEO of IMLogic.
IM Manager runs on Windows 2000 and costs $5,000 per server plus a client-access license fee based on the number of users.
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