America Online today announced the availability of Enterprise AIM Services, a suite of business class solutions that increase the value and manageability of AOL Instant Messenger within organizations. Enterprise AIM Services brings a new level of control and security to instant messaging in the workplace, while continuing to provide organizations with access to the largest and most active instant messaging community in the world.
Along with all of the functionality of the publicly available AOL Instant Messenger software, the world's most widely used instant messaging service, Enterprise AIM Services offers the AIM Enterprise Gateway, a product that is deployed onsite behind a company's firewall to provide a greater measure of control over AIM within the enterprise, an increasingly important requirement for organizations. America Online is also offering an optional Private Domain Service with Federated Authentication that lets companies maintain consistent user identities across corporate communications tools and centrally manage users from their corporate directory. In addition, America Online is offering a Developer Access Package and Certified Developer Program to support the extension of AIM's instant messaging and presence awareness technology to other applications. America Online is also working on an AIM client with encryption capabilities, which is currently in Beta.
Enterprise AIM Services is the first business class instant message offering that is based on the AIM service, already used in close to 60% of businesses, which makes it easier for companies to keep up a greater level of control of instant messaging with minimal or no employee training. Jon Miller, Chairman and CEO of America Online said: "America Online pioneered the use of instant messaging and has evolved the product into one of the most widely used communications tools. Increasingly, as the AIM service finds its way virally into the workplace, businesses are realizing how instant messaging and its presence technology can complement existing communication services, boost productivity, and economically provide real-time customer service. With Enterprise AIM Services we're providing organizations an instant messaging platform using a product that's familiar and easy-to-use with the added management and control features they want. We're also pleased to be working together in partnership with leading communication services companies so that we can provide business customers with instant messaging solutions for their needs today and into the future."
Bruce Stewart, Senior Vice President of AOL Strategic Business Solutions, said: "For businesses today, it's not a question of whether or not instant messaging is valuable, it's how can they use it to best meet their needs. Depending on the nature of their business, some companies require management and control over the use of instant messaging, while others may put a premium on utilizing it for rapid communications with employees, customers, and partners. With Enterprise AIM Services, businesses can fine-tune how the AIM service is deployed and used within the organization, and also benefit from a high performance and dependable network that is a must have for workplace communications."
Enterprise AIM Services Provide Control and Boost Efficiency Enterprise AIM Services are supported by America Online's instant messaging network, the world's largest, which delivers over 1.5 billion instant messages each day and supports more than 180 million registered users of the AIM service, both at home and in the workplace. This network is designed to scale to very high demand with capacity to grow, and ensure business users the highest-level of reliability and performance. Enterprise AIM customers have the ability to communicate with the worldwide network of AIM users and AOL members.
Enterprise AIM Services include a range of solutions that enhance the use of the AOL Instant Messenger software within businesses, including: AIM Enterprise Gateway: With the AIM Enterprise Gateway, system administrators can centrally manage AIM usage within the enterprise. The Product acts as a proxy between users inside the corporate firewall and those on the public AIM network, and enables enterprises to determine how they want to control access, routing and permissions. It also makes it possible to monitor instant messaging usage for legal, regulatory and accounting compliance by logging, auditing and creating reports on all AIM communications. The AIM Enterprise Gateway embeds technology from FaceTime Communications, a leading provider of IM applications and enterprise IM technology servers for businesses.
In addition, an optional Private Domain Service with Federated Authentication makes it possible for administrators to manage users' instant messaging "screen name" identities from the corporate directory and create private domains similar to their email addresses (e.g., user@company.com). Apple, who earlier this year released iChat, an Apple developed instant messaging application which allows seamless instant messaging between Mac.com members and AIM users, worked with AOL to create the first implementation of the Enterprise AIM Private Domain Service with Federated Authentication. This service provides mac.com screen names to iChat users and allowed Apple to be the first company to fully integrate an instant messaging application with AIM and AOL Buddy List users. The AIM service, one of America Online's most popular interactive services, is a free instant messaging product that makes it convenient for users to see when their contacts are online and to communicate with them in real time. Launched in May 1997, the AIM service is available on multiple platforms and can be accessed from the Web, through PDAs and on mobile devices through America Online's partnerships with nationwide carriers, AT&T Wireless, Nextel, Sprint PCS, T-Mobile, and Verizon Wireless. Popular AIM features include the Buddy List for presence awareness, privacy controls, file transfer, custom away messages and preference settings. The suite of Enterprise AIM Services work with AIM versions 5.0 and higher.
America Online is currently developing premium security enhancements, to be introduced next year, which will allow enterprise users to send and receive end-to-end encrypted text instant messages over the AIM network. This easy to deploy, one-click system is expected to make security credential issuance easy and virtually transparent to users. AOL will offer enterprises the ability to utilize security credentials issued by VeriSign, Inc., the worldwide leader in digital trust services. "By building encryption capabilities into instant messaging, America Online and VeriSign are making AIM an even more viable tool for improving business productivity and communications," said Stratton Sclavos, chairman and chief executive officer of VeriSign. "Achieving this higher level of trust and security for instant messaging while ensuring easy deployment should help convince a much larger segment of IT managers to consider supporting IM clients within the enterprise."
Dedicated Enterprise-Class Customer Service: America Online is providing Enterprise AIM customers with dedicated, 24/7 professional services and cross platform support. This includes an innovative Training and Professional Services team that works closely with customers to plan, pilot and deploy Enterprise AIM Services as well as maintenance programs that include online, telephone and AIM support.
AIM Developer Access Package and Certified Developer Program: Available for qualified developer partners, the new AIM Developer Access Package and Certified Developer Program provides technical interfaces, tools, documentation and support for the development of applications that can access and integrate with the AIM client, services and network. The AIM "Presence" SDK enables developers to integrate AIM presence information into custom applications, while the AIM SDK makes it possible for AIM to be embedded into other applications. America Online is working with a number of IM application providers as part of this program to bring greater manageability and functionality to instant messaging in the enterprise, including PresenceWorks, who is integrating AIM presence into a number of pre-existing business software and web applications.