LINQware

Software Magazine, Summer, 2002

LINQware of Kirkland, Wash., is offering the Collabrix product for enterprise instant messaging (EIM), which the company differentiates from consumer instant messaging by recognizing that IT organizations need to get involved in the management of instant messaging for it to be a secure option for business.

"For two classes of people--remote users and those dealing with very time-sensitive information--the ability to provide presence awareness has created demand in the enterprise," says Tod Turner, CEO of LINQware. Even though most organizations that have instant messaging (IM) in place have "consumer" IM--from AOL or Microsoft in most cases--they have found efficiencies in using it. "But the IT departments in charge of security never authorized it," Turner says.

Collabrix has client, administration and server components. The administrative interface lets the administrator see who is having conversations and manage them. The product's back end is "enterprise class," and supports load balancing and fault tolerance. One difference from consumer IM is that users cannot add to their "buddy" lists without permission.

Collabrix is priced in two ways. On a monthly service fee basis, customers pay between $4 and $12 per seat per month, depending on the volume of messages and where the software is hosted. For an enterprise software license, companies pay between $100 and $150 per user, one time. So a company with 250 seats paying $125 per seat for the enterprise license would pay $31,250. Many companies start with one group, then move to more users if they find it is productive.

www.linqware.com