IM upstarts vie for interoperability

Although Microsoft and IBM offer IM products for the enterprise, smaller challengers are staking out valuable territory with a commitment to interoperability. This week both Antepo and Jabber will unveil new IM offerings that bolster standards support and security.

Antepo this week plans to introduce Version 4.5 of its enterprise IM product dubbed OPN (Open Presence Network) System, which offers native support for both IETF IM standards XMPP (Extensible Message and Presence Protocol) and SIMPLE (SIP for IM and Presence Leveraging Extensions). XMPP earlier this year achieved IETF approval, whereas SIMPLE is still in development.

Supporting both XMPP and the emerging SIMPLE allows IT managers to plan presence and IM network deployments without being locked into one protocol, according to Maxime Seguineau, Antepo’s CEO.

“Customers are looking for convergence between the networks,” Seguineau said. “Our vision is that architectures will include both [XMPP and SIMPLE]. We can allow for bridging of the two.”

Furthermore, OPN System 4.5 can interoperate across any standards-based IM network, Antepo officials said.

For ease of deployment, Version 4.5 includes a multi-OS interactive installer that automates installation and configuration for a variety of OSes, including Linux, Unix, and Windows.

OPN System 4.5 also features improved security, including certificate-based, message payload encryption leveraging the Windows Security Service interface, optional Kerberos SSO (single sign-on), and SASL (Simple Authentication and Security Layer) support for server-to-server communications.

Version 4.5 also adds presence capabilities such as integration with Microsoft’s Outlook and presence protection via a new spam guard feature.

“We are a presence platform [providing the] ability to use presence as middleware to build applications we’ve never thought about,” Seguineau said.

Jabber this week will roll out new versions of its Jabber XCP (Extensible Communications Platform) messaging and presence platform and its Jabber Messenger desktop client. Jabber XCP 4.0 is fully compliant with the IETF-approved version of XMPP. Also new are developer extensions that include a Web services interface for integrating presence and IM into applications that use SOAP. Version 4.0 also bolsters security connecting to external XMPP servers, said Kris Skavish, senior product manager at Jabber.

In the fourth quarter, Jabber will release a SIMPLE-based gateway for connecting to Lotus IM.

Although both IBM and Microsoft have lined up behind SIMPLE and have propriety implementations, Michael Osterman, president of Osterman Research, said he believes both SIMPLE and XMPP will survive as standards.

“I don’t think you’ll see one displacing the other,” Osterman said. “[Standards] are probably not the fundamental thing IT managers are thinking about in terms of choosing a solution.”