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• November 13, 2002 •
Microsoft today announced plans for the availability of its new MSN® Messenger Connect for Enterprises service. MSN Messenger Connect offers an enterprise a manageable way of doing business with its expanding external customer base utilizing instant messaging by logging and auditing conversations to a Microsoft® SQL Server™ 2000 database and providing administrative control of instant messaging namespaces for contact names within their organizations.
"Microsoft's experience in providing software and services for both enterprises and consumers makes us uniquely qualified to bring managed instant messaging to the workplace," said Yusuf Mehdi, vice president of MSN. "MSN Messenger Connect delivers features that our enterprise customers have told us they require, such as logging and namespace management, to effectively communicate and conduct transactions with their customers using the MSN Messenger Service."
MSN Messenger Connect empowers businesses to communicate instantly with the more than 75 million unique end users of MSN Messenger, enabling, for example, brokers to share time-sensitive information with customers and clients to make purchases in real time. The new service delivers critical functionality to businesses such as logging and auditing of instant message communications with customers, capturing the data to provide a searchable record of transactions and instant message conversations. In addition, management and administration of user identities and namespaces for employees is provided to give greater assurance that customers are dealing with actual representatives of a particular company or organization. The service, which will cost $24 annually per user with discounts for volume, provides an integrated experience with other Microsoft technologies, including the Windows operating system and Active Directory® API, and with existing Exchange 2000 instant messaging services. In the future, MSN Messenger Connect will utilize Microsoft's integration into the Windows Server product family, code-named "Greenwich.", Microsoft's more ambitious plan to develop corporate IM server technology. "Greenwich" is still at least six months away from release, and some analysts are questioning the release of MSN Messenger Connect, suspecting it might only be a stopgap measure till "Greenwich" is released.
"Greenwich" will feature a host of security-enhanced, enterprise-scale services for businesses, including instant messaging services that expand upon and work in conjunction with MSN Messenger Connect. "Greenwich" will offer a platform for real-time communications scenarios such as voice, video, data collaboration and presence integration.
Microsoft's entry into corporate IM comes on the heels of similar efforts from its competitors America Online and Yahoo. Just last week, AOL unveiled Enterprise AIM, a software solution that let companies manage and control AIM service communications. Last October, Yahoo too announced it would begin selling its own corporate instant messaging product.
MSN Messenger Connect service is scheduled for availability in the first quarter of 2003. More information can be found on Microsoft's Web site.
