Verizon Business has announced a hosted IM service designed for enterprise users.

The company announced its Hosted Secure Instant Messaging (IM) Service on Thursday, stressing its uses in managing employee use of IM, enforcing ethics and compliance rules, and protecting end users from IM-propagated malware such as worms and spim (define).

The service will be provided in two forms: Enterprise Instant Messaging and Managed Public Instant Messaging.

The Enterprise Instant Messaging offering is aimed at companies that seek to provide IM communications only within their own corporate networks. The product will use Microsoft Live Communications Server 2005 and its companion client, Office Communicator. Additional features of the solution will include encrypted chat sessions, search features, and Outlook integration.

The second offering, Managed Public Instant Messaging, reflects the widespread penetration of public IM networks such as AIM, Yahoo and MSN by providing the Enterprise offering's protection against spim and malware while also controlling which public networks employees are allowed to access.

Both offerings, in addition to their basic security and management functions, will provide attachment inspection, keyword policies, and enforcement of so-called "ethical firewalls" between groups of employees in an organization. Logging will allow managers to search and audit chat sessions.

Source: http://www.instantmessagingplanet.com/enterprise/article.php/3597681