Sametime Cuts Federation Deal with Yahoo, AIM and Google

December 6, 2006
By Michael Hall and John Roling

IBM announced today that users of IBM Lotus Sametime instant messaging will now be able to chat with users of the AOL Instant Messenger and Google Talk instant messaging platforms.

In the coming weeks, support will be expanded to include Yahoo's instant messenger product as well. This provides private corporate Sametime communities the ability to connect with the aforementioned public networks, thus allowing users to exchange instant messages and have a combined "buddy list" to check online status of friends and colleagues.

IBM joins a list of vendors supporting both the XMPP (Extensible Messaging and Presence Protocol) and SIP/SIMPLE (Session Initiated Protocol) standards. These vendors include AOL, Google, Yahoo, and Jabber. Supporting both instant messaging standards will allow Sametime users to reach 70 percent of the global Instant Messaging market. Currently, IBM is the only enterprise vendor to support both standards.

"We're utilizing the power of the network to collaborate with 157 million users worldwide," said Akiba Saeedi, Program Director, Real-Time Collaboration, IBM Lotus. "Back in the old days, email was proprietary. You could only send within one system. Eventually it became federated and you could email everyone using the same standards. IM will go the same way, and we're purposely being a leader in that federation."

That said, support for rival Microsoft's instant messaging platform is noticeably absent. When asked if the lack of connectivity to Microsoft's MSN Messenger service was a technical or political hurdle, Saeedi stated that it was neither.

"These aren't technical issues or political," Saeedi said. "These are simply business agreements that we've put together with other vendors. We currently have agreements that connect us to the majority of IM users worldwide."

While Sametime clients have had the ability to communicate over the AIM network for some time, the new functionality represents the first time Sametime has federated with other networks, allowing direct communication between Sametime-based user accounts and accounts on Yahoo, AIM and XMPP servers.

In an interview with Instant Messaging Planet, IBM Lotus senior product manager David Marshak noted that federation has proved to be more desirable to customers, vendors and IM network operators alike.

From IBM's perspective, using Sametime clients to access an unsecured public network like AIM represented a threat to the Sametime brand, which he said the company presents as "secure enterprise managed collaboration." Users, however, "were doing insecure, unmanaged, consumer-type things and didn't know it."

From a client perspective, a move to a federated model means users can drop their sometimes colorful handles in the saturated public IM namespace and use more professional-sounding identities affiliated with their organization.

From the perspective of network maintainers like AOL/AIM and Yahoo, Marshak said the federation model represents a chance to recoup some money lost to unofficial clients, which don't feature ads or promotions for paid content elsewhere in their networks, by picking up licensing revenue from their respective enterprise federation programs.

IBM is providing Sametime users with the ability to connect to public networks through the IBM Lotus Sametime Gateway. This free add-on for existing Sametime customers will act as a translator between a private Sametime community and public services. The server software receives messages and translates them to the proper protocol to be delivered back and forth between the private and public networks. IT staff will be able to configure the gateway to give or restrict access via policies and on a per-user basis, keeping the control that an enterprise needs.

Once set up, users will be able to add their contacts or "buddies" from the public networks directly to their Lotus Sametime Connect client. The buddy list will show users from all the platforms in a unified list, much like standalone instant messaging clients Trillian or GAIM. The user's status will show in the client, letting a user know whether a contact is available, away or doesn't want to be disturbed.

The ability to connect the enterprise with public networks has been a large feature request from customers. "According to a recent IBM CEO study, executives worldwide believe that to achieve effective growth they must communicate beyond corporate walls," said Michael Rhodin, general manager IBM Lotus. "IBM is the first major enterprise vendor to use computing standards to connect over 70 percent of the worldwide instant messaging user base."

The Lotus Sametime Gateway is available now for download from IBM Passport Advantage. Connectivity to AOL and Google is available now, with Yahoo connectivity expected in a couple of weeks. Federated connections to all three public networks are included with standard Sametime 7.5 licenses.

Article courtesy of Intranet Journal with additional reporting by Instant Messaging Planet Managing Editor Michael Hall.