Update: Omnipod beefs up instant messaging service

Omnipod, which provides hosted instant message (IM) services to companies of all sizes, is preparing several enhancements to its platform, including the additions of a Web-based client, a telephony component and a persistent-chat feature, Omnipod’s chief executive officer said.

Omnipod currently has a Windows-based client, so the new Web-based client will open up its platform to non-Windows end users, in particular those working from PCs running Unix, Linux or Apple Computer Inc.’s MacOS, said Gideon Stein, Omnipod’s chief executive officer. “That’s something a lot of our customers have requested,” he said. “The Web client also will substantially increase our ability to do larger and larger deployments.”

The Web client, expected to debut either late this month or in early December, will be Java-based and feature SSL (Secure Sockets Layer) encryption. It initially will let users conduct IM sessions only, but will progressively gain other features found in the Windows-based client, Stein said.

Omnipod, a privately held company founded in 1999, has signed up several hundred companies to use its hosted IM platform, which lets users conduct, save, log and search IM sessions. Omnipod users also can share and transfer files, as well as import contacts from users in other IM networks and communicate with them. Omnipod users can also establish different access rights for shared files and integrate Omnipod’s IM with third-party e-mail and calendaring applications. Pricing starts at US$5 per user per month with discounts starting at 26 users. Optional features and storage cost extra.

As a hosted IM provider, Omnipod handles upgrades, maintenance, security and network operations from its data center. Rolling out enhancements such as those the company has planned is also handled by Omnipod, freeing IT departments from having to spend time and effort installing upgrades, Stein said.

“We can add features to the back end and then roll out new services to people without requiring a massive corporate upgrade,” Stein said. The same thing goes for adding users. “With our solution it’s as easy to deploy 100 people as 10,000 people,” he added. Omnipod’s clients include Texaco, the Mayo Clinic, the state of Florida, Atlas Air Inc., Partners HealthCare System Inc. and the state of Virginia.

The end-user Windows client is downloaded to users’ machines from Omnipod. Companies don’t need to install any server software internally. IT departments get access to a command console from where they can perform management tasks, such as monitoring usage, setting user policies and reviewing logs and calling up archived IM sessions.

Benefit Strategies LLC, an employee-benefit consulting and administration firm based in Manchester, New Hampshire, adopted the Omnipod system about a year ago when executives realized that employees were conducting business-related communications using public IM networks.

Benefit Strategies’ Chief Executive Officer Paul Smith worried that this could compromise the security of the company’s systems and confidential information, and issued a policy that barred IM use among employees.

However, he quickly realized IM had by then become a required business tool for his employees and brought in the Omnipod system. Omnipod fits in with Benefit Strategies’ overall IT strategy of contracting out as many IT systems as possible to hosted service providers. Benefit Strategies, a small company with about 48 employees, wants to free up its two IT staffers as much as possible to do strategic IT work and not bog them down with day-to-day maintenance work, he said.

Benefit Strategies has been so pleased with Omnipod that it has begun to buy extra licenses to distribute to its own clients at its own cost, a move that has been very well received, Smith said. “It has a great deal of marketing appeal to be able to give them that instant service.” Moreover, when meeting with new clients, Smith mentions the Omnipod system as part of the advantages his company is able to offer, he said.

Omnipod is also preparing an integration feature with a telephony provider to let users launch voice conference calls from within the Omnipod IM interface, Stein said. The telephony feature, slated for next year’s first quarter, would give the Omnipod system the ability to automatically contact users at a variety of previously stored phone lines — office phones, cellular numbers, IP (Internet Protocol) systems — and bring them into the conference call bridge, Stein said. Users wouldn’t necessarily have to be logged on to the Omnipod IM system, he said.

“You don’t have to look for those numbers, nor go to a third-party Web site and type in all the numbers, nor send e-mail to people nor call them up and tell them you’re doing a conference call,” said Stein, who wasn’t ready to identify Omnipod’s telephony partner.

Finally, Omnipod is getting ready to add a persistent-chat feature to its system. This feature would create chat rooms in which multiple users can participate at different times, while the entire thread of the conversation remains available for all to see, he said. “It’s a way to continue the conversation and allow people to join later and see the history of what’s transpired,” Stein said.

New York City-based Omnipod, which has seen its revenue quadruple since last year and expects to become profitable during 2005’s first half, is benefitting from many companies’ desire to move their employees away from the public, consumer-oriented IM networks from the likes of America Online Inc., Yahoo Inc. and Microsoft Corp.’s MSN unit, Stein said. Omnipod’s hosted service offers an alternative to the enterprise IM systems from vendors such as Microsoft and IBM Corp., which require considerable attention and management from internal IT staffs, he said.

Traditionally, companies wanting to provide IM to their employees have had two choices: first, let employees use a public IM network and have the IT department secure and manage IM use via an IM gateway installed on a corporate server; or second, buy a self-enclosed, end-to-end enterprise IM system such as Microsoft’s Live Communications Server (LCS) or IBM’s Sametime.

“Companies are starting to realize they have to get rid of consumer IM,” he said. “It doesn’t matter how good your gateway provider is. If the consumer IM network you rely on for your business is down, you’re out of luck.” He doesn’t see his company competing with LCS or Sametime, because those aren’t hosted applications.

Omnipod has positioned itself as a very visible provider of hosted enterprise IM and has stood out for being a very aggressive vendor in reaching out and educating the market about the benefits of a hosted approach, said Genelle Hung, an analyst at The Radicati Group Inc. At the same time, Omnipod is particularly good about listening to its customers’ needs and in staying current with IM industry advances, Hung said.