Online giant America Online, a leader in the public instant messaging space, is trying to leverage its mighty AIM network as a service for businesses.

The Enterprise AIM Gateway adds proxy-based management tools on top of the media and Internet giant's free, wildly popular public service. In fact, Enterprise AIM's use of the same client for public AIM is a key selling point for America Online, which claims a broad user base of about 180 million users -- including 60 percent of all businesses.

Based on FaceTime Communications' flagship IM Director offering, the Enterprise AIM Gateway server enables system administrators to manage individual corporate users' AIM accounts -- to control whether they can send files, or send messages outside the company, for instance.

Deployed behind a company firewall, it also provides for host-based broadcast messaging, anti-virus protection (integrating third-party anti-virus applications) and local routing -- ensuring that interoffice communications don't traverse the larger AIM public network. The Gateway also serves a hub for keyword-tracking, logging, auditing and reporting on employees' IM use.

Additionally, AOL also offers Private Domains with Federated Authentication, which enables companies -- rather than AOL -- to manage their users' AIM accounts. One benefit is that companies can authenticate its AIM users against the corporate directory -- simplifying management of screen names and privileges.

AOL is also working on an AIM client that integrates with the Enterprise AIM Gateway to offer one-click encrypted communication, enabled through a partnership with Verisign.

Enterprise AIM began shipping in late 2002. America Online offers the Gateway Server on both licensed and subscription models. Private Domains and Federated Authentication will be subscription-based as well, while AOL plans to charge additional fees for the as-yet-unreleased encrypted client.

product submission by IMPlanet Staff

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