Enterprise IM? 73
Jsf72672 asks: "With the recently-passed Sarbanes-Oxley legislation, and the looming HIPAA compliance requirements a constant thorn in the side of IT staff, Enterprise Instant Messaging seems to be overlooked. Most users are using AIM or MSN. Microsoft and Yahoo! both have products tailored to the Enterprise, but no one wants to rely their technology to keep them out of jail, or from paying huge fines. Jabber looks attractive but our already overtaxed IT staff does not have the time to compile, secure and test homegrown solutions. What are Slashdot-reading IT Managers doing? I found these guys and their InterIM line of products, and they look pretty good. Is anyone using them? Are there other low-cost solutions you have employed?"
Lotus Sametime (Score:4, Informative)
Re:Lotus Sametime (Score:2)
I mean, it really chews ass.
Just so that you know.
Re:Lotus Sametime (Score:1)
Re:Lotus Sametime (Score:2)
Give your users Jabber. I've tried it out and it's probably the most built for Enterprise usage. Granted, I'm no IT manager, just an end user, but AIM, Yahoo!, and Sametime all more or less suck IMO. Trillian is great for h
Re:Lotus Sametime (Score:2)
Yup, Jabber's good stuff. You can script it using Ruby [rubyforge.org], too, which is nice.
Lotus Notes (Score:2, Insightful)
How much more enterprise savy could you need?
Hmmm... (Score:3, Insightful)
No offense intended if this "Jsf72672" is a real person's usual moniker, but it seems a bit suspicious. Caveat emptor.
Re:Hmmm... (Score:2)
iChat (Score:3, Interesting)
In addition, one of the main things they want is accountability, phone calls (unless you record and index them all) are really very temporary, while iChats can be saved and searched.
On a side note, I was thinking networking at least 5 of the comps that are in close proximity together using Firewire Over IP, but having done a short test between two comps using that setup, i got no better than a pitiful 60KB/ sec, what is up with that?
Re:iChat (Score:1)
Re:iChat (Score:3, Informative)
Jabber.com (Score:1, Informative)
Take a better look at Jabber (Score:5, Insightful)
Just take a gander at the Sponsors box on jabber.org [jabber.org] for starters. You'll find products that drop into almost any environment, are based on open technologies, and can be complimented by many hundreds of open source apps... what could be better?
Closed IM systems are a thing of the past, if we want them to be.
Re:Take a better look at Jabber (Score:5, Interesting)
I'm trying to figure this out myself.
The questioner doesn't have time to check out Jabber (a ``homegrown'' solution in his words) but seems to be willing to use a commercial product with presumably little or no testing.
WTF?
Perhaps I've been reading too many issues of Cryptogram, but it seems that its a crapshoot when a company advocates 'security'. For every product like PGP security, there seems to be a horde of products that are on par with ROT13 or XOR encryption.
Guess what - you need to test and analyze that commercial solution as well. What sort of encryption does it use? Where does it store logs? Are the logs encrypted? What happens if there is no global server? What happens when the network is faulty?
**Grumble** **Grumble**
Look at Jabber, its a good protocol. It does support SSL-connections. Some of the clients support encrypted logs. Its cross platform. Its extendable. It supports local servers. What more do you need?
If your company is going to be depending on an IM system, you better know how it works, how it scales, and what to do when it goes wrong.
Re:Take a better look at Jabber (Score:4, Informative)
Re:Take a better look at Jabber (Score:2)
Re:Take a better look at Jabber (Score:2)
Re:Take a better look at Jabber (Score:5, Insightful)
My only problem with Jabber is the lack of a good MacOS X client. The only mature client, Psi -- which I use on Windows -- is a Qt app hastily ported to MacOS, and so it neither looks nor behaves like a native app. Not a big problem for me, personally, but my colleagues refuse to go near it.
Well I don't like it... (Score:1)
Mewyn Dy'ner
Re:Well I don't like it... (Score:3, Informative)
What is HIPAA? (Score:2)
Aside from that, I'm seriously leaning towards a group-wide IRC network rather than using IM for business. Turn on all the security, install a few bots (help/faq, admin, relaying messages, etc) and log everything -- that would probably cover all legislative requirements there might be.
Re:What is HIPAA? (Score:4, Informative)
Bottom line is, there should be no way for patient data to "escape" from the networks of a healthcare provider. THis includes machines with no removable storage (yes, I'm serious), no phone conversations about the data in common areas, etc. etc. etc. A lot of it is commonsense security, some of it is "WTF?", and all of it is a pain to retrofit into preexisting systems. Believe me.
Re:What is HIPAA? (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:What is HIPAA? (Score:2)
Meaning, thin-clients, right?
I actually think that is a good idea.. prevents data leaks and makes administration FAR easier, reduces cost too..
Re:What is HIPAA? (Score:1)
Apparently, the law makes sure that workers keep their health insurance after they change jobs. It also is an attempt to standardize insurance transactions and privacy of health data.
Source: http://www.cms.hhs.gov/hipaa/ [hhs.gov]
Re:What is HIPAA? (Score:1)
Mewyn Dy'ner
Re:Actually HIPPA, IIRC (Score:1, Offtopic)
trillian (Score:2, Informative)
I've needed to update it once in a year due to changes to MSN. But its been pretty dependable
Re:trillian (Score:2)
Non-enterprise Yahoo (Score:2)
Jabber doesn't just look good, it is good. (Score:2)
Just install a well-known and reliable binary
package from a trustworth distribution such as
Debian stable or RedHat 9.0.
Just do what most everyone does... (Score:3, Funny)
Or get a real solution (Score:1)
HealthApps.com [healthapps.com] - Secure online collaboration, document management and compliance.
</shamelssplug>
Fivepoints (Score:2)
Re:Phone calls! (Score:1)
But IM works for me as well, I love the presence feature of it... it's great for the short notices and file swaps...
just think about it...
e-Week Speical Report on Enterprise IM (Score:5, Informative)
Here is a Special Report from eWeek on Enterprise IM [eweek.com] and it has some good reviews and articles including
Corporate IM Solutions [eweek.com]
Instant Messaging in the Enterprise [eweek.com]
Lowcost? (Score:3, Interesting)
Low cost it probably is not. And the client software sucks, be nice if they had at least 1/2 the functionality of Gaim.
The Deviant Tech., products looks interesting and is probably cheaper than Sametime. There is an interesting article here [instantmes...planet.com]
If you already have existing contacts w/ IBM U might be able to leverage them to get a deal on Sametime, especially if you have Deviant Catalog sitting on your desk. ;) Deviant looks almost like an applicance type of idea and looks worth investigating.
For those who don't know, companies in the Financial Sector are now being required to same all e-mail, and IM communications for employees responsible for Financial decisions. In other words the Mutual Fund manager has all her communications recorded, but the lad cleaning the bog (loo/toilet/john ...) does not.
I believe that this data has to be saved for seven years (or five or something). From what I've heard it's a tremendous amount of data. Where I work there are thousands of employees whose e-mail & IM have to be saved. We talking many terabytes of data here and it's a real nightmare. Thankfully I'm not involved in that!
It will interesting to hear which solution you use, how easy it is to set up and run, and how the users like.
Afraid I have to post Anon, part of working for big Fin companies is not talking about what their infrastructure, or at least not telling which company's infrastructure one's referring to! Luck!
Jabber (Score:2, Insightful)
Just install an RPM and run a client.
It'll take you all of 10 minutes.
Jabber.org=buggy ... jabber.com=overpriced (Score:3, Informative)
Only problem is, the free Jabber has a number of bugs, and isn't really built for an enterprise deployment. It lacks support for integration into existing directories and authentication structures, an easy mechanism for pre-populating buddy lists, and many other "corporate" features and services.
As it happens, most missing features are available in the commercial jabber.com [jabber.com] release, which costs big big bucks.. thousands to tens of thousands for licensing, plus annual fees of around ten b [unixreview.com]
Re:Jabber.org=buggy ... jabber.com=overpriced (Score:2, Informative)
Given the context of the original question, being the "Enterprise", I would argue that "thousands to tens of thousands for licensing" is actually fairly cheap. This isn't big big bucks by enterprise standards at all. It's chicken feed.
For a third party company to provide a supported solution which keeps you in compliance, I'd bet Enterprise companies would pay far more.
Re:Jabber.org=buggy ... jabber.com=overpriced (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Jabber.org=buggy ... jabber.com=overpriced (Score:2)
'Jabber.org' is not buggy, unless you are referring to the website having bugs.
You're probably thinking of the 'jabberd' server software, but this is not a product of jabber.org, and it is not the only server software available. Saying "the free Jabber" would make about as much sense as saying "the free HTTP". Remember, Jabber is an open protocol, and anyone is free to implement it. Just as with any other standard protocol, such as email, there are many software solutions (free, comme
IRC with lots of logging (Score:1)
Re:IRC with lots of logging (Score:1)
With IRC, everybody has to be logged in to the IRC room or you can't send a message. If there's a lot of people logging in/out, chatting, etc, any message you send to Bob will probably be lost if Bob is busy doing work instead of dicking around in IRC.
Re:IRC with lots of logging (Score:1)
FYI, we use IRC at work for R&D discussion. We have our own server and run bots that can rebuild libraries during the day. It's extremely useful.
Jabber (Score:1)
Jabber (Score:1)
Deviant at LinuxWorld (Score:2, Interesting)
That said, it was too expensive for my client, who is now using a basic Jabber setup...
SILC: Secure open source chat, GPL licensed. (Score:3, Informative)
It's like IRC, but with public key encryption built in from the ground up. And All SILC software is Open Source [silcnet.org] (GPL).
So far, the only complaint I've received is the lack of a good MS-Windows client.
The X and text clients for Unix are usable, and there's even an Irssi module. but the Windows clients lack the polished user interface that people have come to expect from their Microsoft-centric chat services.
BTW, SILC Client 1.0.1 was released this week.
Re:SILC: Secure open source chat, GPL licensed. (Score:1)
Mate, i am all for text if it is faster and/or does the work better. I deploy Linux servers everywhere so i know the value
Re:SILC: Secure open source chat, GPL licensed. (Score:2, Informative)
The other SILC clients available for MS-Windows are GUI win32 binarie with a point-n-click interface with graphical icons. In some ways this is worse, since the icon imagery in some clients doesn't seem to have any relationship to what the buttons actually do!
Jabber Appliance (Score:2, Interesting)
This kind of thing has to be a good option for people not confident at rolling their own, or for the enterprise that wants a solution that's easily supportable.
Just being able to plug a black-box into your network and have it authenticate with existing systems has got to be a bonus.
Parlano (Score:1, Interesting)
RM (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:RM (Score:2)
From what I can tell [reuters.com], it's just a rebranded version of MSN Messenger. Same shit, different wrapping.
Re:RM (Score:3, Informative)
The "standalone client" uses the MSN interface with a custom backend to handle the crypto, logging, etc. The real RM is a pane in a trading workstation.
IBM Sametime (Score:2)
I'm not sure what kind of clients are available publicly but all of IBM uses it quite effectively.
Plethora Perspective (Score:2)
Osterman Research Surveys (Score:1)
Encryption on 'standard' networks (Score:2)
Then forbid anyone to contact people on the 'outside'. Perhaps even force 'contact lists' to be read-only to the users, and audited.
That should be enough to satisfy the feds.
I'm Writing An Open Source Solution (Score:2)
I've only been working on this for a couple of months now, so it's barely usable right now,
Promising Enterprise IM Solution (Score:1)