Sprint Enters the Corporate IM Market

Sprint Corp. is creating a bridge between verbal communication and the typed word with its new Sprint Enterprise IM offering.

The new system is now available as either a managed hosting platform or a corporate IM solution wholly contained inside the firewall. Sprint also says its new Enterprise IM is the “first secure, end-to-end IM platform” that uses JAVA 2 Micro Edition (J2ME). It is based on open standards, and is interoperable with current 2G technologies, as well as WAP and SMS. The J2ME-based technology also will be available as 3G networks and devices are launched.

With the new Enterprise IM, Sprint promises that both desktop PCs and handheld devices will be able to communicate with one another via IM. Via J2ME, users can see the presence and status of other users. Status is a J2ME technology that comes with SIP-based notification, which enables notifications to be sent over wireline and wireless networks to automatically launch the IM application on a handset.

Sprint’s Enterprise IM platform uses standard SSL encryption for secure messaging, and can have other security features added to desktop clients or the IM server.

The system is based on text messaging, which translates to minimal bandwidth impact to a company’s network.

Companies wanting to trial the new platform can visit a special Sprint ESolutions Web site to register and download up to 20 seats for 60 days of free use. The download only includes a Windows-based client and a client for the Palm platform, and both are used with Sprint’s managed hosting platform.

Sprint Enterprise IM has already won Best of Show for Communication and Collaboration at Internet World Spring 2002.

Bob Woods is the managing editor of InstantMessagingPlanet.