There are two problems with using consumer grade IM clients within the enterprise, according to Jabber founder, Andre Durand . "First, corporations want unity in the naming conventions between email addresses and IM accounts. That's the case with Jabber. Second, they won't want their internal communications taking place out on the Internet, especially when they're being mirrored off servers run by consumer services. There's a confidentiality issue."
Enterprises are just beginning to wake up to the security threat posed by consumer IM clients. It's a trivial matter for a cracker to intercept IM communications on the consumer services, and thus the company could be leaking secrets. Jabber addresses this issue with several levels of security.
There's more on Jabber in Part 2 of CTOMentor's peer-to-peer white paper:
Peer-to-Peer Computing and Business Networks:
More Than Meets the Ear, Part 2 – How Are Businesses Using P2P? Part 2 is available at
MindCrossing
for a fee of $50. Part 1 - What is P2P? is available for free at
CTOMentor.
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