Microsoft preps MSN Messenger for enterprises

Microsoft on Wednesday will introduce a service for corporate customers that will allow users to extend and manage their MSN Messenger instant messaging capabilities across the firewall and help Microsoft play catch-up with rivals in the instant messaging market.

MSN Messenger Connect for Enterprises, which is expected to ship before April 1, 2003, will offer auditing, logging and management features required by corporations that are increasingly looking to use IM as a communications tool.

The service will offer a namespace that integrates Passport identifications and corporate IDs stored in Active Directory to facilitate centralized IT user administration.  Today, Passport identifications are managed individually.

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Microsoft on Wednesday will introduce a service for corporate customers that will allow users to extend and manage their MSN Messenger instant messaging capabilities across the firewall and help Microsoft play catch-up with rivals in the instant messaging market.

MSN Messenger Connect for Enterprises, which is expected to ship before April 1, 2003, will offer auditing, logging and management features required by corporations that are increasingly looking to use IM as a communications tool.

The service will offer a namespace that integrates Passport identifications and corporate IDs stored in Active Directory to facilitate centralized IT user administration.  Today, Passport identifications are managed individually.

Additionally, Microsoft will offer corporations the chance to purchase a unique namespace on the MSN service, which would allow a company to use its own name for its instant messaging identity. For instance, Network World could buy the namespace "@ network world”.

The service is a precursor to the sort of enterprise instant messaging features Microsoft plans to introduce with its real-time communications server for instant messaging, voice and video code-named Greenwich, which is expected to ship in the middle of next year.

Connect for Enterprises will be offered on a yearly subscription basis starting at $24 per user with volume discounts down to $12. The subscription includes the licensing, connectivity, namespace and ID control, and premier support.

“We are providing the enterprise with a variety of management tools to use instant messaging with external customers,” says Larry Grothaus, lead product manager for MSN.

As part of the service, users will have to deploy a third-party gateway from IMLogic or FaceTime Communications for managing IM traffic. Microsoft has asked those vendors to integrate the Passport application-programming interface into their products so that Active Directory can be linked with the Passport service. The gateway will listen for the MSNMP instant messaging protocol and log those conversations. Users will have to run Windows 2000 and SQL Server 2000 to support the logging and auditing features.

Microsoft is reacting to the intense popularity of instant messaging and its grass roots explosion in corporations, where network executives are scrambling to manage its use.

Instant messaging is used either sanctioned or unsanctioned in 84% of companies with that number expected to climb to 93% in 12 months, according to a September survey of 196 respondents by Osterman Research. That same survey showed that 60% of company’s use AOL Instant Messenger, while 50% use MSN Messenger and 45% Yahoo Messenger. 

AOL last week offered its own AIM Enterprise Gateway for companies looking to manage its IM service. In October, Yahoo said it also would offer enterprise support for its IM service.

All of the providers are looking for ways to generate revenue from their IM services, which are free and have taken off like wildfire.