Intranet Journal — Lotus Sametime Embraces Public IM Networks

Tom Dunlap — 6 December 2006

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.

The article touches on the absence of Microsoft from this accord. With the appropriate extra gubbins (Live Communications Server 2005 Public IM Connectivity), its existing real-time comms product, Microsoft Office Live Communications Server 2005, can already connect with the instant messaging services of MSN (natch), AOL and Yahoo. So, too, will its successor, Office Communications Server 2007.

“What’s the problem?”, Microsoft might be excused for asking.