Thomson Reuters Unites Enterprise IM Systems
February 16, 2009
Instant messaging (IM) took another step in the direction of e-mail and the telephone earlier this month, with Thomson Reuters' launch of a hub that lets enterprise IM users connect through a single link.
Noting that the timely distribution of market information is "vital" in a time of heightened volatility, David Gurle, global head of collaboration services at Thomson Reuters, noted that "over the last few years IM has matured and become the nerve system of many financial institutions to conduct business decisions, progressively replacing e-mail." But corporate IM users have not always been able to reach their peers and customers.
The messaging hub, dubbed the Reuters Messaging (RM) Interchange, is being touted as the first to connect Thomson Reuters' IM service with Cisco Systems' Jabber XCP, IBM Lotus Sametime and Microsoft's Live Communication Server and Office Communications Server. Those platforms' users can now connect with over 5,000 external organizations and add their business contacts to a global community.
Customers that link to RM Interchange are also connected automatically to Reuters' community of more than 130,000 end users at 5,000 firms and will be listed on an inter-company directory, potentially creating the world's largest business IM community, according to Thomson Reuters.
"Enterprise software vendors have looked into meeting some of the information technology requirements around instant messaging but they have missed one key requirement--the ability ... to talk to anybody in the world," said Gurle. "We worked with a number of technology providers and customers to build this."
Thomson Reuters says the new hub federates IM customers without having to establish individual links. Connecting hundreds or even thousands of instant messaging users can tax IT departments.
Dave Uhlir, product manager with Cisco's collaboration software group in Denver, said the service will make IM "much more connected." He added, "It's a network effect where the more users that can connect with other users" produces an "exponential value growth." Uhlir was VP of marketing at product management at Jabber when it was acquired in October by Cisco. Jabber's IM and presence capabilities are being integrated into various Cisco product lines, he added.
A network like RM Interchange, said Uhlir, where there is a community of trusted trading or business partners, adds another value. "Obviously you can use public IM systems which have a very broad reach, but that doesn't work so well in the enterprise space, especially in the securities industry," he said. "It's a higher level of service and authentication than you'd get just by using a public instant messaging system."
Robert Ingram, senior product manager for Lotus Sametime, agreed. "This will allow particularly those in the financial markets to be able to exchange more readily and easily instant messages with one another over a secure channel rather than using insecure, public [IM channels] for those conversations," he said. "We have had this capability to integrate with other IM environments like AOL and Yahoo for some time, but this brings an enterprise-class service as an option for customers."
John Eley, CEO of Pivot, a Jersey City, N.J.-based provider of trading tools based on IM technology, noted that his company's platform is similar to RM Interchange in that it works with AOL Instant Messaging and Yahoo. "The idea of making these networks speak to each other is a very smart thing to do and is something we have worked on for a while," he said. "It's great that they're doing it also, because it simply makes instant messaging that much more valuable a tool."
