The big news today? AOL seems to be re-entering the enterprise IM market.
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Having tried before and failed, this time AOL are trying to the enter the space with WebEx as a partner. I still don't believe AOL understand the efforts involved in selling to enterprise customers, and I'm still not sure enterprises are totally ready to outsource their IM to someone else. Too much valuable company information is being exchanged over IM for many customers to trust, and after the stunt AOL pulled a few months back where their license agreement for those using the AIM client implied that AOL owned any content exchanged over the IM system, many became very concerned with AOLs goals.
The partnership with WebEx makes sense, WebEx is viewed as best of breed in the Web Conferencing space and very importantly WebEx have a corporate sales force so they understand the efforts involved, and have existing relationships with potential customers.
Which leads to a question and something I have often thought about, how many companies are using Sametime and WebEx for their meeting services? Would you want to start an instant meeting from Sametime, but have it launch WebEx? New Poll on the right...
Judging by the last poll, It looks like Lotusphere 2006 was a hit, Kudos IBM.
Poll Results:
Lotusphere 2006 Hit or Miss?
Hit(92%)
Miss(5%)
Total Votes: 64
Hhmm, 64 respondents, that's almost double a Radicati survey
Having tried before and failed, this time AOL are trying to the enter the space with WebEx as a partner. I still don't believe AOL understand the efforts involved in selling to enterprise customers, and I'm still not sure enterprises are totally ready to outsource their IM to someone else. Too much valuable company information is being exchanged over IM for many customers to trust, and after the stunt AOL pulled a few months back where their license agreement for those using the AIM client implied that AOL owned any content exchanged over the IM system, many became very concerned with AOLs goals.
The partnership with WebEx makes sense, WebEx is viewed as best of breed in the Web Conferencing space and very importantly WebEx have a corporate sales force so they understand the efforts involved, and have existing relationships with potential customers.
Which leads to a question and something I have often thought about, how many companies are using Sametime and WebEx for their meeting services? Would you want to start an instant meeting from Sametime, but have it launch WebEx? New Poll on the right...
Judging by the last poll, It looks like Lotusphere 2006 was a hit, Kudos IBM.
Poll Results:
Lotusphere 2006 Hit or Miss?
Hit(92%)
Miss(5%)
Total Votes: 64
Hhmm, 64 respondents, that's almost double a Radicati survey
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