Antepo, Jabber Give IM a Boost

Companies looking for an instant messaging system that allows communication with users outside the enterprise will find good solutions in Antepo Inc.s Open Presence Network System XT server application and Jabber Inc.s JabberNow appliance.

Antepos OPN System XT, which shipped in August, gives companies an excellent alternative to better-known enterprise IM platforms. At $30 per seat, its also a bargain, particularly for applications that involve persistent group IM.

Jabbers JabberNow, which also shipped in August, costs between $40 and $100 per seat depending on the number of user licenses per appliance and is a good fit for small organizations or branch offices.

In eWEEK Labs tests, we liked OPN System XTs overall capabilities. It offers a good feature set on the end-user client, and it includes a Web-based administration front end and integration with enterprise directories and databases. The JabberNow appliance provides a subset of features available in the Jabber IMA (Instant Messaging Advanced) and Jabber XCP (Extensible Communications Platform) IM servers. Its modular architecture provides flexibility and extensibility that allow companies to offer more than rudimentary, internally focused IM.

Both OPN System XT and JabberNow use the open-source-derived XMPP (Extensible Messaging and Presence Protocol) for IM, so administrators can use many commercial and open-source client options beyond those that ship with the products. In addition, OPN System XT supports SIP (Session Initiation Protocol)/SIMPLE (SIP for Instant Messaging and Presence Leveraging Extensions), so companies can use SIP/SIMPLE-based clients.

Technical Analyst Michael Caton can be reached at michael_caton@ziffdavis.com.