AOL is making its popular AOL Instant Messenger service more palatable for business users, although one analyst said the new offerings could create some headaches for IT departments.

On Thursday, AOL will announce new online meeting and voice conferencing features for its service, as well as the new suite they will belong to, called AIM Business Services. That suite is expected eventually to grow beyond the two initial features being announced this week.

"We have seen an explosive growth in the AIM network over the past several years, especially in the work environment, which is why we are introducing tools and services for that community," said Brian Curry, AOL's senior director of AIM network services. AOL estimates that of the about 36 million active users of AIM, about 15 million use it for work purposes, he said.

The two services are called AIM Web Meetings and AIM Voice Conferencing, and are offered in partnership with a pair of vendors that specialize in each area: WebEx Communications for online meetings and Lightbridge for voice conferencing.

AIM Web Meetings lets an AIM user initiate an online meeting from his or her "buddy list," which is the main AIM interface. Participants in a Web meeting are taken to an online site where they can collaboratively share, edit and annotate documents, share and control applications, and, of course, participate in online chats and exchange instant messages with each other. To get invited, participants don't have to be AIM users, and if they are AIM users, they don't have to be logged into the service; in these cases, participants are invited via e-mail. The underlying platform on which the online meeting takes place is provided by WebEx.

Meanwhile, AIM Voice Conferencing is designed to significantly simplify the process for setting up and hosting a conference call. Participants who are AIM users and who are online can be invited via an instant message, while those who are either not online or not AIM users can be invited through an automatic phone call the system places to them. All participants are linked via a call-out method, which means that the system generates all calls and participants don't need to call in, eliminating the need for them to remember the call's phone number and their access codes. The underlying technology is Lightbridge's GroupTalk, a new service that is also being announced Thursday.

The IDG News Service is a Network World affiliate.