August 30, 2004
Radicati Group Calls LCS 2005 "Bold Step Forward"
Report says, "We believe this move will remove a big hurdle that was keeping many organizations from deploying enterprise IM -- the inability to use IM transparently across networks."
Microsoft's move to connect its Live Communications Server 2005 instant messaging system to the major public IM networks is, "a bold step forward in the enterprise instant messaging arena," according to The Radicati Group, the Palo Alto, CA-based messaging research firm. "We believe this move will remove a big hurdle that was keeping many organizations from deploying enterprise IM -- the inability to use IM transparently across networks."
In the background coverage of enterprise instant messaging housed in its August edition of "The Messaging Technology Report", the firm asserts that, "Instant messaging in the enterprise has finally taken off, but not in the way vendors and others had expected it to . . . IM has grown rather unchecked within enterprises mostly as a grassroots productivity tool."
Radicati's report asserts that LCS 2005 will remove the "missing link" of enterprise instant messaging. "The missing link is the lack of transparent interoperability across the public IM networks or enterprise offerings, such as Lotus IM and Web Conferencing or Microsoft LCS."
Interoperability has been impossible to establish because of a lack of common protocols in the IM world. Radicati points out that while both major and minor vendors have created enterprise IM solutions, and that some of the solutions are based on accepted protocols, such as SIP/SIMPLE and XMPP, the solutions have all been proprietary.
These systems can only be deployed within an enterprise and the report notes, "This has proven to be a huge stumbling block in getting enterprise IM to really take off . . . enterprise IM users have continued to use the free public IM networks in order to be able to communicate outside as well as inside their own companies."
The report explains that LCS 2005 provides connectivity with AOL Instant Messenger, MSN Messenger, and Yahoo! Messenger, but it does not provide true interoperability. However, because the connectivity is based on protocol translations worked out between Microsoft and the IM vendors, the connectivity will be transparent, which is by itself a breakthrough.
The current crop of products that support some form of multiple-vendor connectivity, such as Trillian from Cerulean Studios, Linux Gaim, and Fire.app from Epicware, use home-grown linkages. And those are prone to failure when the IM vendors make protocol changes, something that occurs with some frequency. The Radicati report points out that "The public networks have in the past taken drastic measures to prevent these interface clients from working by constantly changing their proprietary protocols, which prevents users from using the interface client until a patch is released."
Radicati Group expects Microsoft to make serious inroads into the enterprise IM market with this important addition to LCS 2005. To date, LCS has garnered about 18% of the market, according to Radicati's analysis. "We expect that this connectivity, once in place, will help to strongly position LCS as a market leader in enterprise IM, and will increase its market share significantly," the report says, explaining that no one else can provide this type of connectivity.
Users can plan more effectively about their use of enterprise IM, according to Radicati, although there is a more important user benefits to be gained from the cooperation between Microsoft and the public IM networks. "Eventually, we believe this will lead to full interoperability, much in the same way that email gateways gave way to deployment of a single, common email protocol."
As for other vendors, Radicati thinks that LCS 2005 will rejuvenate interest in enterprise instant messaging and help the likes of FaceTime, Akonix, and IMLogic. "We expect that these vendors will still continue to have a sizable market opportunity since not all companies will want to buy into Microsoft LCS."
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