Live blogging: Instant Messaging Market from Radicati
Tags :eBuddy Microsoft Facetime instant messaging chat IM
Radicati Group had a webinar this morning on Instant Messaging Market: An Evolving Landscape that piqued my interest. The panel that was put together included:
- Jan-Joost (JJ) Rueb - CEO of eBuddy, an awesome aggregator of IM services
- Eric Young - Sr Director of Field Services at Facetime
- Dave Kong - Product Manger at Microsoft Lync Server 2010
Sara showed the numerous reports they just released on eDiscovery, email platform for service providers, this one and wireless email market. She then entered the panel discussion before open Q&A. Her question in italics and my summary following.
Why is IM still a competitive market? Microsoft gave the best answer saying IM is part of the broader solution and framework. Clearly it has value that communication may start with IM and escalate or be solved with the capabilities such as web conferencing.
With more and more solutions forming federation agreements, how is this changing the IM landscape and what you all are doing? All aggregate or federate a connection in some form, Outside of Facetime that provides a service around the evolution and merging of enterprise and public networks. Security is something you want multiple layers. Some is built into the platforms, the rest is needed to be applied.
Security continues to be a concern for business and consumer users. How well do you think the current IM security technology is keeping up with IM threats? People are not advertising the fact they are being hit by malware over IM channels. Some enterprises cannot tell if it came from the web, IM or even brought in from home technology devices. In general IM has had more security with things such as presence control.
All speakers agreed secure authentication procedures should be used. From encrypted wifi networks to SSL.
Will IM move to a bit more mobile technology? It is a personal way of communication so it makes sense to use your phone. But the need for advanced capabilities, it is a messaging system and some features will need a computer.
Will IM move to be a simple feature of social networking? Speakers had some opinions and didn't commit either way. Each is a unique piece of a social network, so needing a social network to just have IM and presence will not make sense.
Does eBuddy connect with or work with SMS networks? He can see it happening, but not short term.
Is Microsoft planning support for iOS and Android for Instant Messaging? Microsoft is looking into different devices right now, but no timeframe .
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My summary
She really didn't dig into anything hard or not presented in their slides. Quite disappointing with the group she brought together. I hoped for more content and deeper questions about market and movement. I wish Lotus Sametime had been part of this as well as it fit right into the conversation numerous times. I left slightly empty.
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Sara Radicati did the brief introduction at the very beginning and let each vendor take about five minutes to talk about their product. Read on that summary below
eBuddy -(I have personally used eBuddy many times when corporate firewalls block access when I needed it.)
- Started in 2004 with 3 partners, they added funding
- now reach 189M users in the database
- 230k new users daily
- 16B messages processed per month
- They support pretty much all the major public IM networks
- Their web interface get 22M monthly visitors.
- On mobile they are expanding with over 17M monthly unique users. iPhone, Androids and more are supported. Plus a mobile web version.
- They are #42 on must popular Facebook product pages
- Interestingly they are being searched for the most in Egypt, India and Indonesia
Facetime - (I have used them as a filtering and logging appliance for IM traffic. They also had a nice clean slide deck look)
- Founded in 1998 with global operations now
- A market leader in 9 of the top 10 US banks
- Support pretty much all the IM clients and versions
- Data leakage, incoming threats, user behavior, compliance and eDiscovery are common issues they solve
Microsoft
- Their goal right now is a seamless solution on-premise or cloud
- Lync offers all the services you expect with IM, audio, video, conferencing, voice/telephony
- Working across devices including the Mac
- Built in people search and skill search
- Integration with public IM systems
- Hover over business cards (a la Sametime)
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On Thursday, December 2nd, 2010 by Chris Miller
