* AOL releases AIM Pro for SMBs, branch offices and individuals
AOL last week moved to address business concerns of using instant messaging platforms in the workplace by releasing AIM Pro, which offers security and enterprise-grade features. AIM Pro is designed for small and midsize businesses, as well as smaller organizations like departments within companies, and individuals.
Osterman Research conducts a semi-annual tracking survey of IM in the workplace and continues to find that consumer IM dominates the use of IM by people at work, despite the continued growth of enterprise IM solutions. Chief among these concerns are namespace control, encryption of IM content and the use of IM as a vector for worms, viruses and other threats to infect corporate networks. AIM Pro addresses all of these issues.
AIM Pro allows corporate e-mail addresses to be used as an individual’s IM screen name, providing a migration path from the old to the new name. Instant messages can now be sent using SSL encryption to protect the confidentiality of communications. AIM Pro also offers automatic antivirus scanning capabilities, allowing a recipient to perform a virus scan on a document on AOL’s servers before downloading it.
In addition to these features, AIM Pro offers a number of other capabilities, including integration with Microsoft Outlook’s calendar, integration with WebEx that allows the set up of ad-hoc, Web-based meetings and desktop-sharing using WebEx’s technology and local logging of IM conversations. Other features include podcasting and information feeds from “The Wall Street Journal”.
AIM Pro represents an important step forward for a couple of reasons. First, the offering provides some sorely needed enterprise-grade features that should help alleviate at least IT concerns about the use of IM in the workplace. Second, the combination of these features and the ability to contact most IM users in the workplace who are using other systems via federation and AOL’s Clearinghouse capabilities makes AIM a very useful tool for use in the workplace. Microsoft’s and Yahoo’s recent announcement about allowing their respective users to contact each other via IM is also an important step forward toward the interoperability that has been lacking for so long in the IM space.
AIM Pro is available as a free download, although some features, such as Web-based meetings, are available for a fee.
