Today, AOL will be launching its new AIM Pro
service, targeting the corporate market with features such as enhanced security
and online meeting services.
The new service will be available for free and offer
WebEx and Microsoft Outlook integration to
further entice corporate users away from more traditional offerings such as
Lotus Sametime from IBM. In the
future, AOL will also offer premium packages for a fee that include management
consoles, logging and other regulatory compliance features, an attempt to break
into the IM Security field, fighting the likes of
Symantec and their
IM Manager product.
The main down-side is that the Pro client will be limited to AOL IM, ICQ and
GoogleTalk users, leaving out Yahoo and MSN Messenger. This lack of
interoperability opens the way for third party connector tools to be brought
into the corporate environment.
AOL Pro can be downloaded
here.