Coversant gets up on its SoapBox

Coversant’s SoapBox Platform is an XMPP-based enterprise instant messaging system that consists of three basic components: the SoapBox Server, the SoapBox Communicator and the SoapBox Studio. Coversant claims that the system is currently used by about 2 million individuals and thousands of enterprise users.

The SoapBox Server can support up to 250,000 concurrent users on a single server. It integrates with a variety of directory servers, including Active Directory, Novell eDirectory and the Sun ONE Directory allowing it be used nicely in heterogeneous messaging environments. Remote administration is designed into the product; it supports cross domain communication and allows for minimal administration.

The SoapBox Communicator client is free for download and provides important enterprise-grade features, including conversation archiving; automatic, XMPP-based encryption and the ability to establish conferences easily.

The SoapBox Studio, an open source and multiplatform software development kit allows XMPP-based enterprise IM capabilities to be added to existing applications and it allows .Net applications to be customized.

While there are a variety of good enterprise IM systems on the market, Coversant is interesting for a couple of reasons. First, the system is highly scalable, able to support a very large number of concurrent users and, according to independent benchmark tests, it can handle 5,000 messages per second and will support as many as 1,000 virtual servers on a single box. That makes it suitable for even the large enterprises and also for service providers. Second, the SoapBox Server can communicate with other XMPP-based servers.

Coversant’s offering provides a very low cost per user in large environments and is definitely worth a look for organizations and service providers that are looking for enterprise IM capabilities and integration of presence with existing applications.