IM, VoIP, Conferencing Roadmap Unveiled

Corporate instant messaging (IM) and conferencing services will get major updates in the first half of 2005, according to Microsoft’s Real Time Collaboration group. Releases slated for 2005 include a new service that connects public IM services, such as AOL Instant Messaging and Yahoo Messenger, to the Live Communications Server corporate IM product; a new client product called Office Communicator 2005 (code-named Istanbul) that replaces the Windows Messenger client; and a new version of the Live Meeting Web-conferencing service. Microsoft hopes the new releases will help drive these emerging real-time communication and collaboration technologies into broader business use.

Public IM Connectivity

Microsoft is making good on its announced plans to make it possible for customers to securely link their Live Communications Server (LCS) 2005 systems with the major public IM providers, thereby removing one of the key roadblocks to IM adoption by businesses. A new subscription offering that went live in Apr. 2005, LCS Public IM Connectivity (PIC), allows organizations to use LCS 2005’s federation support to link with LCS gateways at AOL’s AIM and ICQ, Yahoo Messenger, and MSN Messenger IM services. LCS users will be able to see the presence status of contacts (or “buddies”) in the three public IM services and exchange instant messages with them, and vice versa, while maintaining the single corporate identity, security, and message-archiving capabilities provided by LCS. However, in this first release, the federation support does not support the voice, video, or data-sharing capabilities of LCS 2005 and the Windows Messenger client; these capabilities are only available when used inside the corporate firewall or over virtual private network connections.