IMlogic: A start-up to watch

IMlogic

Company name: Company founders wanted to convey how they help customers make sense of instant messaging in the enterprise, so they married logic with the IM initials.

Origin: Founded in February 2001 by Francis deSouza and Jon Sakoda. DeSouza had been head of Microsoft’s real-time collaboration group, which he joined after the software giant bought his instant-messaging company, Flash Communications. Sakoda worked at Goldman Sachs, where he was a strategic adviser to software companies and was instrumental in managing the firm’s $1.5 billion technology private equity fund.

Funding: A $14 million second round closed in January 2003, bringing total funding to nearly $18 million.

Investors: General Catalyst Partners, Goldman Sachs, Kodiak Venture Partners and Venrock Associates.

CEO: Francis deSouza.

Product: IM Manager.

IMlogic’s IM Manager is the sheriff in the Wild West of instant messaging, as the grass-roots adoption of instant messaging spreads unchecked – and unmanaged – across major companies. IM Manager provides corporations with the means to control and track usage of instant messaging, introduce security and policy compliance regulations. It also provides reporting and archiving features.

IMlogic’s focus is controlling the pipes that carry instant-messaging traffic. The server-based IM Manager supports the most popular instant-messaging products, including those from AOL, Lotus, Microsoft and Yahoo. Big-name users such as Bear Stearns and Merrill Lynch have turned to IM Manager to control instant-messaging usage.

The software’s signatures are that it does not require installation on clients and that it integrates with Lightweight Directory Access Protocol-compliant corporate directories. Directory integration lets administrators take cryptic instant-messaging screen names and link them to established corporate usernames, control access and selectively archive messages based on users and groups categorized in the directory.

IM Manager, which costs $5,000 per server plus a client access license fee based on the number of users, also lets users block file transfers and create reports that provide details such as average message size or usage by time of day or department.

The Waltham, Mass., company is working on adding virus scanning and a stand-alone gateway product that will integrate disparate instant-messaging software, much like technology that linked e-mail systems before the advent of messaging standards.

Standards also will change the nature of instant messaging and pressure companies such as IMlogic and its top-tier competitor FaceTime Communications because major platform providers will begin to build instant-messaging management into their software. As a pioneer in the instant-messaging management market, IMlogic bears watching.

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