Microsoft previews real-time corporate messaging

By Matt Whipp

Posted on 7 Mar 2003 at 12:57

Microsoft is hoping the popularity of instant messaging will put a fire under its corporate communications version, which supports a number of encryption technologies as well as logging mechanisms.

Hugely popular in the consumer space, AOL leads the instant messaging market with its AIM service, despite Microsoft's ability to bundle its version of instant messaging with other key products such as Windows XP. But with the first public beta of 'Greenwich', the company is hoping to tackle the enterprise market with a real-time messaging system that authenticates users, supports industry standard security protocols, including SSL encryption, Digest and Kerberos, and offers logging functions needs to comply with financial and securities regulations.

Even so, it is jumping into a pond with some already big fish. Systems from AOL, Yahoo and IBM have already stolen a march on Microsoft, with AOL and IBM looking to create interoperability between their applications. Sun and Oracle are also looking to add muscle to their corporate messaging.

Still, Microsoft is planning the Greenwich as just one element of what it is calling its real-time communications suite. Anoop Gupta, corporate VP of the Real-Time Collaboration Business Unit at Microsoft, said: 'The delivery of this beta represents a milestone in the development of the 'Greenwich' technology, which is a component of delivering Microsoft's overall real-time collaboration vision. We seek to profoundly change how corporations communicate, by bringing together best-of-breed presence and instant-messaging technologies with enterprise-grade control and manageability.'

The service will offer more than just instant text messages, says Microsoft, and include features familiar to the consumer version such as PC to PC voice conversations and video.

According to Gupta, 'Presence-based communications will revolutionize the way information workers collaborate,in the same way email changed corporate communications in the late 1980s and early 1990s.'

Greenwich operates on Microsoft's Windows Server 2003 which will be available next month, with a general release of the service slated for the summer.