[JDEV] "Lotus sametime" = really another IM system in this world?

[Sameer Verma]

Michael F Lin wrote:

>
> Disclaimer: I'm not on the Sametime team and in no way speak in any 
> official capacity whatsoever about it. Please do not quote me on 
> anything in this e-mail, lest you get me into trouble.
>
> I've heard around the office that Lotus Sametime controls about 60% of 
> the corporate desktop instant messaging market (the same market that 
> Jabber, Inc. plays in). From what I understand, it's managing to do 
> well against other offerings at least partly because of its encryption 
> and server-side logging facilities, which are mission-critical for IT 
> departments in the financial sector, for example. (Server-side logging 
> seems unsavory to us in the open-source community, but it's a legal 
> requirement for many enterprises)
>
> Also note that Sametime is not just instant messaging and presence (or 
> "awareness" as it is called), but it is also an entire e-meeting 
> platform with audio/video conferencing, whiteboarding, etc.
>
> Sametime 3 and up is moving to a SIP-based protocol.

I just came back from an academic IS/IT conference in Dallas, where one 
presentation was on VoIP and Video Conf. using SIP for session 
initiation, as opposed to H.323. The speaker had a good side-by-side 
comparison of the two, and pointed that the "bellheads" seem to like 
H.323, while the "netheads" like SIP. He also pointed out that SIP 
appears to be the protocol of choice. SIP/Jabber interoperability or 
discovery and session initiaiton via SIP in the Jabber environment is 
definitely worth looking into.

Sameer

-- 
Sameer Verma, Ph.D.
Asst. Professor of Information Systems
San Francisco State University
San Francisco CA 94132 USA
http://verma.sfsu.edu/