Secure AOL instant messaging for business hits market

Computerworld - Instead of starting from scratch, America Online Inc. yesterday unveiled new security and control features designed to give its widely used AOL Instant Messenger (AIM) product the security teeth it needs to be used by business employees (see story).
In its announcement, the Dulles, Va.-based company said its newly launched Enterprise AIM Services (EAS) will allow IT administrators to have more control over instant messaging (IM) usage, while adding long-desired security and auditing features critical for business.
The EAS package will include AIM Enterprise Gateway, which is to be installed behind a company's firewall to help provide tighter control over incoming and outgoing messages. Also being offered is an optional Private Domain Service featuring federated authentication to allow companies to centrally manage users through their existing corporate server directories.
AOL is also providing developer packages and programs so applications can be written to integrate with AOL's IM client.
Still missing from the AIM client package for business, though, are encryption capabilities, which are being worked on in beta versions and are due for release by early next year, according to the company.
The business IM marketplace has been a hotbed of activity recently, as competitors seek an advantage over the rest of the field. Last month, Yahoo Inc. in Sunnyvale, Calif., was the first major consumer IM company to announce an enterprise edition of its IM software, called Yahoo Messenger Enterprise Edition 1.0 (see story).
Rather than redesign a corporate IM client from scratch, AOL is using its existing consumer IM client and wrapping it with the enterprise services package, said Derick Mains, an AOL spokesman. To add security and archiving features, AOL got help from Foster City, Calif.-based third-party IM security vendor FaceTime Communications Inc., which embedded its technology into the AIM client to provide needed features, Mains said.
Digital trust services vendor VeriSign Inc. in Mountain View, Calif., is also working with AOL to integrate encryption capabilities by next year.
Fees for business usage of the new AIM are expected to be approximately $34 to $40 per seat. The new services and features, with the exception of the encryption capabilities, are available now.
Michael Osterman, an analyst at Osterman Research Inc., in Black Diamond, Wash., called the business AIM version "a pretty significant development," because AOL is the leader in the consumer IM marketplace.
"It doesn't have all the features yet," he said. But that probably won't be a problem since many businesses won't have the money in their end-of-year budgets to deploy it now, anyway. By the