Is Microsoft Missing the IM Interoperability Boat?

Peter Galli IBM's Lotus Sametime 7.5 instant messaging customers can now communicate with users of AIM and Google Talk, and will be able to do so with Yahoo Messenger in a matter of weeks.

Big Blue has also thrown its weight behind the use of the Extensible Messaging and Presence Protocol (XMPP) for interoperability with Sametime, while it has been a longtime supporter of the Session Initiated Protocol (SIP/SIMPLE).

Akiba Saeedi, the program director for IBM Lotus Sametime, told me that IBM is joining AOL, Google, Jabber and Yahoo in support of the SIP/SIMPLE and XMPP industry standards, which "are propelling change and growth in the real-time collaboration industry, and helping the technology evolve beyond its basic chat roots to the centerpiece for varied types of communication such as VOIP [voice over IP] and Web conferencing."

But the interoperability between these IM platforms is only available to Lotus Sametime 7.5 users, who will also not be able to interoperate with Microsoft's MSN Messenger, Windows Live Messenger or Live Communication Server.

"Interoperability between Lotus Sametime and MSN or Live Communication Server is not currently available. Our goal is to allow Lotus Sametime users to connect to any public instant messaging community they would like. Today's announcement, and IBM's support of both XMPP and SIP/SIMPLE, is a big step in that direction, and we will continue to work toward achieving that goal," she said.

Saeedi also took a swipe at Microsoft and its lack of support for these industry-standard protocols, telling me that clearinghouses, such as the one from AOL--access to which is included in the Sametime entitlement--can be used to connect enterprise IM systems with those enterprise IM vendors that do not fully support standard protocols.

But these moves mean that Lotus Sametime 7.5 users will now be able to send and receive instant messages, and view the presence awareness status, of more than 157 million instant messaging users worldwide--some 70 percent of the worldwide instant messaging user base, according to figures from Michael Rhodin, the general manager for IBM Lotus.

Is Microsoft missing the boat here and doing its instant messaging customers a disservice?