Tuesday, August 03, 2004

AOL Phases Out Business IM
PC World has a good piece on AOL's decision to phase out business instant messaging, abandoning its AIM Enterprise Gateway. This comes on the heels of Yahoo's announcement that it was canning the Yahoo Business Messenger.

"AOL launched the AIM Enterprise Gateway in November 2002, a response to 'IT managers' request that they wanted a control point between our network and the AIM client on their employees' desktops,' says Brian Curry, AOL's senior director of AIM Network Services. 'This was the product to do this.'

"FaceTime Communications, a player in the instant messaging gateway software space, developed AIM Enterprise Gateway for AOL. At the same time, AOL also partnered with FaceTime competitors, such as Akonix Systems and IMlogic, to certify their products' compatibility with the AIM network.'Over time, it became apparent to AOL that it made little sense for it to continue to develop, market, and support an enterprise instant messaging gateway when it could simply partner with vendors that specialize in this type of software, Curry says.'"
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