• Sidebar: MSN Web Messenger Coming

The next version of Live Communications Server (LCS), which works with Windows Messenger clients to provide presence information, instant messaging (IM), and person-to-person conferencing services, will support optional connectors that allow it to link with the three largest public IM service providers: AOL, Yahoo, and MSN. These options remove one of the major roadblocks to IM adoption by businesses—the inability of corporate IM systems to exchange IMs securely with users of Internet-based IM services, such as those from AOL and Yahoo IM services. However, it will cost extra because Microsoft has agreed to pay AOL and Yahoo royalties in exchange for rights to connect to their services.

The IM Tower of Babel

Ever since MSN began to offer a public IM service that competed with AOL’s Instant Messenger (AIM) service, users have wanted to exchange IMs between the two systems. Microsoft and AOL have battled on this front for years (Microsoft supporting interoperability, AOL opposing it). When Yahoo entered the fray and AOL bought ICQ (an ISV that built one of the first popular IM products) and continued to operate it separately from AIM, the situation became even worse. These competing providers all rely on subscriptions and advertising to pay their operating costs and have been unable to come up with mutually acceptable revenue-sharing arrangements that would enable IM service interoperability. Some software vendors, such as Trillian, have tried to build clients that could communicate with multiple IM services, but this approach is fragile: when a service changes a protocol (which happens periodically), the client vendor must scramble to issue an upgrade or patch, and the client is not supported by the IM providers.

When organizations began considering IM for internal communications, they found that these public services lacked important features, such as logging of messages (to meet regulatory requirements in the financial industry, for example), security, and confidentiality. This led to the emergence of corporate IM systems such as LCS and IBM’s Lotus Instant Messaging (formerly known as Sametime) that address these needs.

Still, just as organizations with corporate e-mail systems also need to exchange e-mail with customers or business partners, many also want the ability to communicate with users of the public IM services. However, the lack of standards, closed interfaces, and interoperability barriers among the big three public IM services made this all but impossible, causing many organizations to hold off on IM completely, even though the technology had the potential to meet some business needs better than e-mail.

Microsoft addressed interoperability between its own corporate and public IM systems by combining a multiprotocol version of its Windows Messenger IM client (which can communicate with both LCS 2003 servers and with MSN’s .NET Messenger service), a service called MSN Messenger Connect, and third-party gateways from Akonix, FaceTime, and IMLogic. This solution lets LCS users maintain their corporate identities (e.g., johndoe@xyzcorporation.com) on the public .NET Messenger service and offers other benefits, such as logging of messages between external and corporate participants. However, LCS and MSN Messenger Connect are not integrated; instead, the combined system takes advantage of Windows Messenger’s ability to simultaneously connect to both LCS and the .NET Messenger service. (Microsoft also continues to offer and update the MSN Messenger client, which hooks to the same .NET Messenger service but does not work with LCS and is intended only for consumers. For the latest news, see the sidebar "MSN Web Messenger Coming".)

AOL and Yahoo were each pursuing similar solutions—business IM software that could link up with their public IM services. Yahoo offered a separate enterprise IM client, called Yahoo Business Messenger, and AOL offered its AIM Enterprise Gateway product. However, in spring 2004, both companies backed off from this market and shortly thereafter both announced deals with Microsoft to open their services up to allow communications with LCS.

An Important Step Toward IM Nirvana

The LCS interoperability deals will not provide general interoperability between the public IM services offered by the three players, but it does mean that business customers using LCS 2005 will be able to communicate with users of all three public IM services while maintaining LCS’s tight security, message logging, and single corporate identities, which will put Microsoft ahead of its competitors in these respects.

Microsoft plans to offer add-on connectors that can link LCS 2005 to AOL's AIM and ICQ services, Yahoo Messenger, and MSN Messenger, thus providing connectivity with public services. For direct connectivity with LCS 2005 users in other organizations, LCS 2005 customers will be able to build "federated" IM systems that trust the LCS servers of other organizations and link those servers over the Internet without requiring virtual private network (VPN) connections. Authorized users will then be able to see the presence status of people in the trusting organizations and exchange instant messages with them, while maintaining LCS’s full security and message-archiving capabilities. The new connectors will basically extend these same federation capabilities to the AOL, Yahoo, and MSN IM services.

Microsoft has not yet revealed technical details on these connectors, such as specific protocols used and whether they will support voice and video. However, Microsoft has disclosed that they will be charging extra for connectors (at least for AOL and Yahoo) and will pay a portion of the license fees as royalties to those IM providers.

Vendors of other corporate IM systems, such as Jabber or Lotus Instant Messaging, could try to establish similar interoperability with public services, raising the possibility that a public IM service could serve as an IM hub between organizations using LCS 2005 and other corporate IM systems. However, neither Microsoft nor any of the public IM service providers have announced any intention to support this.

Limited Role for MSN Messenger Connect

Currently, enterprises with LCS can subscribe to MSN Messenger Connect for US$9 per user per year plus the cost of additional gateway software from Akonix, FaceTime, or IMLogic. Since the new connectors will work at the server level and provide translation between LCS’s SIP and SIMPLE protocols and the public services’ proprietary protocols, in most cases they will eliminate the need for additional gateways or multiprotocol clients. However, organizations that continue to use LCS 2003 or that have no corporate IM system can still use MSN Messenger Connect for IM.

Availability and Resources

LCS 2005 and the connectors are scheduled for release in the fourth quarter of 2004.

More details on what’s new in LCS 2005 are available in "Live Communications Server 2005 Taking Shape" on page 20 of the June 2004 Update.

Detailed information on LCS 2003 is available in "Bare-Bones Live Communications Server Ships" on page 8 of the Jan. 2004 Update.

A description of the differences between MSN Messenger and LCS can be found in "Instant Messaging Split to Continue" on page 22 of the April 2003 Update.

Information on MSN Messenger Connect is available in "Business-to-Customer IM Solution Planned" on page 18 of the Jan. 2003 Update.

More information on LCS 2003 and Windows Messenger can be found at www.microsoft.com/office/livecomm/prodinfo.

MSN Web Messenger information can be found at webmessenger.msn.com.