Messaging and collaboration

Collaborative workspaces, instant-messaging management, Web conferencing meeting spaces

By Christine Burns and Keith Shaw, Network World, 02/28/05

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Winner: Akonix's L7 Enterprise

The biggest news in the messaging space last year was the emergence of instant messaging as a corporate tool. No longer were employees using IM solely to check in with friends about lunch plans - they had begun to use the systems for communicating with customers, clients and other business partners for work purposes.

But with compliance regulations such as the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act and the Sarbanes-Oxley Act looming over corporations, monitoring and managing IM systems is a potential headache for IT departments. We set out to test for the best IM and monitoring system, and found the Akonix L7 Enterprise deserving of that credit.

Lab Alliance members Christine Perey and Travis Berkley said they were impressed with L7 Enterprise's customization features for user configurations and policies, especially in governing file transfers by type, size or time of day. With L7 Enterprise, you can get as detailed as creating a policy that lets only marketing employees send PDFs and JPEG files between the hours of 8 a.m. and 4 p.m. on Wednesdays. You can apply rules to IP address, IM handle and other identity management types. The system also lets you set rules based on user location. With this feature, for example, you can mandate that users be connected to the VPN to use IM. The system features an easy-to-use Windows program for creating attractive summary or detailed reports, charts and graphs. These can be used as PDFs, Crystal Reports or HTML.

Update THE PRODUCT: In November 2004, Akonix launched L7 Enterprise 4.0, with support for Microsoft Office Live Communications Server 2005, connectivity with public IM networks and support for IBM Lotus Instant Messaging (formerly Sametime). Other enhancements include the ability to manage access to games, audio/video conferencing, application sharing and other features of public IM clients; the ability to support mobile and remote users; some load-balancing capabilities; enhanced anti-virus support; and the ability to customize user notifications by user, group or domain. The company also released Version 3.1 of its Enforcer security software, adding capabilities to stop unauthorized IM and peer-to-peer file sharing. For example, Enforcer 3.1 can block transmission from the BitTorrent peer-to-peer network, popular for movie-sharing. THE COMPANY: Akonix is a private company backed by venture capital firms Menlo Ventures, Mission Ventures, Palomar Ventures and Windward Ventures. According to Akonix, it added 190,000 seat licenses in the third quarter of 2004, ending the quarter with more than 500,000 seats at more than 400 customers. Company wins included Rochester Public Utilities and Ardsley Advisory Partners, a Connecticut investment firm. Akonix also spent the year fleshing out its management team, hiring Ron Hegli as vice president of engineering, Kip Quackenbush as vice president of worldwide sales, and Timothy Breidigan as vice president of business development.

This small company earned accolades for its innovative technology, and we hope to see more innovation from Akonix in future upgrades.

PRODUCT MASTERMIND

The man: Eric Cattell, lead software engineer

Job duties: A member of Akonix's founding team, Cattell has been a key architect and core engineer for Akonix L7 Enterprise since its release in 2002.

Favorite Feature: "Our policy management engine. It is unique, complete and easy to use. Sixty seconds after an organization deploys Akonix L7 Enterprise, the administrator can create any policy needed, whether it's blocking all file transfers, limiting who employees can IM with or filtering for confidential information. Instantly that policy applies to any user or group of users, on any IM system used, across all the public IM networks and their internal enterprise IM system."

Finalists In our Clear Choice test, we found the Oracle Collaboration Suite offered a number of good tools (Web conferencing, e-mail, calendaring, file storage and content searching) for letting workers share information and find data within a company. Also impressive was the variety of methods — Web, desktop client, PDA or cell phone — Oracle supports for accessing the system.