Corporate IM software makers eye Wall Street

Computerworld - The adoption of instant messaging (IM) software by financial services firms mostly involves end users communicating via consumer-oriented products, often unbeknownst to IT managers. But vendors of enterprise-class IM products are trying to change that.
For example, Reuters Group PLC this month said that more than 225,000 financial services workers worldwide, including 80,000 in the U.S., have signed up for the Reuters Messaging technology it launched in October (see story). London-based Reuters collaborated with Microsoft Corp. to develop what is essentially the first version of the software vendor's upcoming corporate IM application, code-named Greenwich. It's due out in June.
IBM wouldn't disclose end-user totals in the financial services industry for its more established Lotus Sametime software. But Jeremy Dies, a manager of collaboration offerings at IBM's Lotus Software Group, said eight of the top 10 commercial banks worldwide use Sametime.
IM is attractive to banks and brokerages because it can streamline both internal and external communications. But analysts and IT managers said uncontrolled use of the technology could open up firms to computer viruses and to regulatory actions by government agencies, which require that electronic communications be logged and stored.
Products such as Sametime and Reuters Messaging include functionality that's designed to meet the security and regulatory compliance needs of financial services firms. In addition, the three top vendors of consumer IM products -- America Online Inc., Microsoft and Yahoo Inc. -- last fall announced versions of their software aimed at corporate users (see story).
Reuters Messaging is among the first IM products, of either commercial or consumer grade, based on the Internet Engineering Task Force's (IETF) Session Initiation Protocol (SIP) messaging standard. Products written using SIP will allow end users to speak with one another across different platforms.
Lotus' Sametime doesn't use native SIP code, but instead uses a SIP gateway device that doesn't allow streaming video or conferencing. Dies said the SIP standard, currently being devised by the SIP Working Group of the IETF, will soon be robust enough to natively allow streaming video or conferencing. "And we're absolutely gung-ho about adopting it [SIP] into our product then," he said.
Wells Fargo & Co. last year rolled out a set of Web chat and collaboration tools for its customers. Jim Smith, senior vice president of the San Francisco-based company's consumer Internet products, said Wells Fargo is considering the purchase of an enterprise-class IM product in order to support one-to-one communications internally and communications with its customers.
Jim Lenz, senior vice president and co-manager of trading at Bridge Trading