Live Communications Server 2005 to Link with AOL, Yahoo, MSN

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.