Posts Tagged “msn”

imlogo.GIFWell known for its analysis, the Gartner Group predicts, in its last week press release, that Instant Messaging systems will be the "de facto" tool for voice, video and text chat with 95% of workers in leading global organizations. It may even become the primary interface for real-time communications by 2013. The Gartner Group forecasts the IM market to grow from 267 mio/USD in 2005 to 688 mio/USD in 2010.

As part of the corporate IT infrastructure, they recommend use of corporate IM solutions such IBM "Lotus Sametime" or Microsoft's "Office Live Communication Server" as they can be protected by the corporate firewall. One key part of IM corporate setup will be the "Presence Technology" which allows people to establish the availability of others for real-time communications regardless of their location.  It also enables users to cut through desktop clutter, resulting in immediate responses.

As a result, Gartner predicts that by 2012, presence technology will be offered independently of IM and email products.  Mr David Mario Smith, research analyst at Gartner, urged vendors and enterprises alike to recognize this and develop a real-time architecture with presence as the key ingredient. “The IM client is becoming the launch pad for many types of communications channels and services,” he concluded.  “Presence will extend its influence beyond IM to become an essential source of innovation for enterprise applications of the future.” 

This release collides with a discussion I had last week with some colleagues about which IM tool we were using and which one is our preferred. Personally, a tool like Skype makes my day as I get to use it to transmit and receive messages from many networks and not exclusively from the Web. However, it is well known that Skype is a real nightmare for corporate ICT Security officer and this piece of software always tries its best to find a way to connect the net, bypassing any corporate security (firewall & NAT) using peer-to-peer technology.

Full Press release is available on Gartner site

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kopete.pngI found an interesting review made by ExtremeTech about some of currently available multi-services Instant Messenger (IM) clients supporting at least all 3 majors IM services (MSN, Yahoo, ICQ). While the option for Mac users is limited to Adium, it exists few Web 2.0 based solutions such meebo and eBuddy and a bunch of classic software for Windows-based computer. Etremetech's prefered choice is the long existing Trillian Pro version (25 USD) but they also speak about PC-World prefered SightSpeed (also for MacOS) and the Swiss Army knife-like Raketu (I plan to test both of them in the coming days).

The list will grow up again with soon release of Orgoo, which aims to integrate email, IM, chat, SMS, and video messaging into one interface.

To sum up the six services in this review roundup, here's a table comparing their features:

  Adium eBuddy Meebo Meetro Pidgin  Trillian
 
Services supported:            
AIM Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes
MSN/Windows Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes
Yahoo Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes
ICQ Yes No Yes Yes Yes Yes
IRC No No No No Yes Yes
Jabber/Google Yes No Yes Yes Yes Yes**
Bonjour/Rendezvous Yes No No No Yes Yes**
 
Multiple simultaneous service login Yes No Yes Yes Yes Yes
Ad free Yes No Yes Yes Yes Yes
Tabbed message window Yes Yes No No Yes Yes
Contacts in groups Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes
Message history Yes No Yes Yes Yes Yes
Text formatting Yes Yes Yes No Yes Yes
Themes/skins Yes No Just colors No No Yes
Group chat support Only join existing Yes Yes No Only join existing Yes
Buddy icons Yes No No No Yes Yes
Audio chat No No No No No Yes**
Video chat No No No No No Yes**
Mac/Windows Yes/No Yes/Yes Yes/Yes Yes/Yes Yes*/No No/Yes
Web-based No Yes Yes No No No
Plugins No No No Yes, but only 2 available Yes Yes

Source : ExtremeTech 

 

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