IBM Messaging Platform Gets Real-Time Remake

Hoping to tap into the explosive growth of instant messaging (IM), IBM Corp. has begun promoting an upgraded version of its Lotus Sametime software to Wall Street, beginning with an event last month in New York that it billed as "Real-Time, Right Now, Really Cool."

The eight-year-old Sametime platform, now in version 7.5, combines IM with Web-based conferencing and VoIP (voice-over-Internet protocol) communications, allowing users to switch from an IM session to a single- or multi-person conversation, or to quickly expand a simple chat session into a fully collaborative Web conferencing event where participants share and co-edit documents and can utilize a full complement of Web conferencing tools.

Analysts point out, however, that the most significant aspect of the Sametime announcement for the financial services industry is the fact that Sametime is now built on the Eclipse open-standards platform, allowing for the addition of a host of new, industry-specific capabilities from either internal, corporate IT staffs or from a growing list of IBM third-party vendors.

Mike Gotta, principal analyst with Burton Group, a Midvale, Utah-based research and consulting firm, said, "IM vendors like Jabber have had a head start because their platform has favored third-party application development for some time, but now IBM is pushing the plug-in model for their own IM platform that will support the building out of a great many applications."

One such plug-in, integrating videoconferencing, will soon be available from Avistar Communications Corp. of Redwood Shores, Calif., which has supplied its desktop video software to top securities firms such as Deutsche Bank and UBS. "Everyone is looking for ways to deploy next-generation technologies to advance collaboration and unify communications in a fluid, global business environment," said Avistar chairman and CEO Gerald J. Burnett. "The video dimension [with IBM Lotus Sametime] provides users a way to interact with optimal depth and clarity for quicker, better decisionmaking and enhanced productivity."

Other suppliers represented at the New York event and working cooperatively with IBM included Akonix Systems, developer of software that logs IM conversations for compliance purposes; telecommunications equipment and VoIP giant Cisco Systems; Nortel, provider of advanced voice, video, audio conferencing and mobility options; Radvision, developer of software that can escalate IM interactions into multiparty audio and video sessions; and Research in Motion, manufacturer of the BlackBerry mobile communications device.

Analysts pointed out that IBM's emphasis on open standards contrasts with Microsoft Corp.'s strategy on corporate IM messaging. "Today, customers can take advantage of a unified approach to communications that can easily be extended based on open standards--not proprietary code--putting customers in control of their collaborative environment," said Michael Rhodin, general manager for IBM Lotus software.

IBM announced that during the fourth quarter, its product will be interoperable with AOL Instant Messenger (AIM) and other IM systems. In fact, Sametime IDs will be usable on the AOL system. "This is important," said David Marshak, IBM senior product manager for real-time collaboration, "because you will no longer be using an AOL instant messaging ID, but will be Joe Corporate in terms of your identity, something that is important to customers of financial services firms."

Furqan Nazeeri, founder and CEO of Pivot Solutions, a spin-off of Boston-based Eze Castle Integration that offers an institutional trading system called IMTrader, said that the IBM Sametime announcement should give IT departments at large-scale financial services firms more confidence that they can offer IM capability with a fuller set of security features and controls.

"It's something that allows them to use IM with far more confidence," said Nazeeri, whose company has allied with AIM, the most popular of the networks. However, he questioned IBM's ability to win new business from financial firms "because the services they are currently offering are very generic, and traders on Wall Street don't share graphs that frequently with their clients."

Todd Christy, CTO at Pyxis Mobile, a supplier of wireless enterprise software applications to the financial industry, particularly to asset managers, saw Sametime 7.5 as "not groundbreaking technology, but it's stuff that Lotus Notes users have been waiting for." He also said that he fully expects to see a tightening of corporate oversight of IM use on Wall Street and elsewhere and that IBM is well positioned to take advantage of that trend.

"Tools such as this will simply help corporations feel that they have better control over growing IM use and can put appropriate policies and systems in place to ensure IM encryption and compliance," he said.