AOL, Lotus to conduct IM interoperability tests

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By Jennifer Disabatino

(IDG) -- The developers of the two biggest consumer and corporate electronic messaging products said Tuesday they're conducting a joint interoperability test on their instant messaging (IM) systems using the SIMPLE protocol, one of three standards under study by the Internet Engineering Task Force.

Lotus Development Corp. and Dulles, Va.-based America Online Inc. said they would test the Session Initiation Protocol for Instant Messaging and Presence Leveraging Extensions, commonly known as SIMPLE.

"The trial will involve two distinct IM test systems, AOL's AIM and Lotus Sametime. The systems will communicate with each other on a server-to-server basis via [SIMPLE]," the joint statement said. (AOL Time Warner is the parent company of CNN.com.)

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AOL is conducting the trial to determine how to enable interoperability between AOL and third-party IM systems in a secure and reliable way, the statement said. In approving AOL's merger with Time Warner Inc., the Federal Communications Commission required the company to open its dominant instant messaging service to third-party IM services, such as Microsoft Corp.'s MSN Messenger and Yahoo! Inc.'s Yahoo! Messenger.

When installed, the session initiation protocol finds the recipient of an instant message and "talks" with his e-mail server to identify what kind of information will be transferred in the message, such as HTML code or an audio file.

It's one of three protocols the IETF was considering as a standard for instant messaging. Earlier this year, the standards body indicated there might instead be a combined standard. That would include parts of the other two protocols, which are known as Presence and Instant Messaging (PRIM) and IMXP, which is based on block extensible exchange protocol (BXXP).

Many e-mail programs already use SIP, which is one benefit for the SIMPLE protocol, and it can transfer more types of files, according to its proponents.

That ability is at least one reason why Lotus is looking at SIMPLE, according to Beth Ann Cregg, a marketing manager in Lotus' advanced collaboration group. If a simpler protocol were approved, Lotus would have to essentially dumb down its Sametime IM product, which can share files now.

The announcement isn't an endorsement of the protocol, Cregg said, "This is not a decision on either part on what is the right protocol to use. The idea here is you need to get some experience using this protocol to find out what it has or what it might be missing."

The two companies, which have worked together in the past, came up with this agreement to get responses from the corporate and consumer sides, Cregg said.

"Each company comes at it from a different perspective of what's required," Cregg said.

Under a licensing agreement, Sametime users already can contact AIM users. AOL blocks most third-party IM services from its buddy list, which is, in part, what prompted a Federal Trade Commission probe into AIM amid the AOL-Time Warner merger. Each of these companies also faces Microsoft Corp. as its biggest rival.

Last month in a letter to the FCC, AOL said it was working with an unidentified technology company to develop an interoperable version of its instant messenger system. AOL spokeswoman Kathy McKiernan said that the company referred to in the letter was Lotus, a subsidiary of IBM Corp.