Instant Messaging Server [closed]

instant-messaging

There is increasing interest in my company for an internal IM implementation. What commercial or OSS products are currently available?

are they easy to setup?
does they have proprietary clients?
any pitfalls that I should be aware of (exponential increase in network traffic)?

It would be nice to hear from people who have actually deployed this technology

Solution 1:

OpenFire is a great XMPP Server. Fast, stable, wide community support with lots of extensions, both commercial and OSS.

Not to mention, integrates with LDAP-based systems, even with Active Directory, so no separate logins are necessary.

Used it, even modified its source to add some features very specific to one project I were in (in short, moderated q&a chat rooms feature with a java applet ;) ).

As some XMPP client apps support NTLM, users don't have to set up any passwords there so no problems with the policies requiring periodic password changes.

Solution 2:

If you're already on the Microsoft stack (specifically Exchange) then Office Communications Server is a good choice for internal IM. It can talk to external clients but that's an extra cost (a per-user, per-month cost I believe).

OCS also supports voice comms and can seamlessly switch between text and voice, although I've not personally had experience with the voice aspect of it.

Solution 3:

I'd say go with some implementation of XMPP. There are clients for every OS under the sun (both free and commercial), and it can also hook up with public servers, Google Talk for one.

Solution 4:

The one that I finally settled on was ejabberd.

It's XMPP, so there are a lot of clients available (we use Pidgin). It's easy to install (it's a standard package in most Linux distros) and easy to set up (it has a simple web interface). It also supposedly scales much larger than any of the other ones, if that is a concern.

Solution 5:

We happen to be using Lotus Notes for our email server and client and have just activated their SameTime product after seeing it during a demo.

We are very tentatively taking our first steps into Corporate IM but because it links to our calendars I think it has a good chance of being successful.

Of course you need to have the Lotus products - a server and clients but if you have that anyway then the set-up was minimal!