Shelley Solheim

Instant messaging users in the financial industry have been among the more vocal advocates for interoperability among IM networks, and this week Reuters Group plc. gave those users another glimmer of hope when it announced that Version 5.0 of the Reuters Messaging service will federate with Microsoft Corp.s and America Online Inc.s consumer IM services. […]

Amid rising concerns about the privacy and security implications of using peer-to-peer communications tools in the enterprise, IT managers are beginning to block the use of such services, even as vendors begin to roll out technologies to address the problems. Officials at Skype Technologies S.A., maker of the popular VOIP (voice over IP) tool, admit […]

Jet-setting road warriors at The Northwestern Mutual Life Insurance Co. subsidiary Russell Investment Group often found themselves moving from taxi to airplane to taxi—wasting time that could have been spent taking care of business. Like many enterprises, Russells IT team struggled at first to justify the costs of arming its mobile workers with wireless access […]

While the eyes of most of the industry were focused on Microsoft Corp.s belated entry into the software-as-a-service world, the company quietly made another move that could prove to be just as important in coming years. Microsoft last week acquired Media-Streams.com AG, a small company based in Zurich, Switzerland, that develops business applications based on […]

America Online co-founder Steve Case said last week he is resigning from Time Warners board of directors. Case, who co-founded America Online in the mid-1980s, orchestrated AOLs $112 billion merger with Time Warner in January 2001. But as shareholder value plummeted in the wake of the merger, Case in 2003 stepped down from his role […]

Managed e-mail security services provider MessageLabs Ltd. is acquiring enterprise instant messaging vendor Omnipod Inc. to expand its security services beyond e-mail and Web filtering. In the short term, MessageLabs plans to offer Omnipods hosted IM service, Professional Online Desktop, as a separate service, but in the first quarter of next year the company will […]

Microsoft Corp. said today it has acquired Media-Streams.com AG, a 23-person company based in Zurich that develops business applications based on VOIP technology. Microsoft plans to incorporate Media-Streams technologies into its corporate IM platform, Microsoft Office Live Communications Server (LCS), and its Office productivity tools. Media-Streams technology is already integrated with Microsoft Outlook and Exchange. […]

Managed e-mail security services provider MessageLabs Inc. is acquiring enterprise instant messaging vendor Omnipod Inc. to expand its offerings beyond e-mail and Web filtering services, said officials today. In the short term, MessageLabs plans to offer Omnipods managed hosted IM service, Professional Online Desktop, as a separate service, but in the first quarter of 2006 […]

Hoping to catch a ride on the software-as-a-service wave, America Online Inc. is working to integrate its popular instant messaging client with WebEx Communications Inc.s Web meeting tool and Microsoft Corp.s Outlook with the aim of offering a hosted, subscription-based service for businesses. The offering, in development at AOL and unofficially dubbed AIMPro, is slated […]

In the wake of Floridas devastating hurricane season last year, recreational boat retailer MarineMax Inc., based in Clearwater, Fla., turned to local systems integrator CompServ Inc. to implement a new disaster recovery system in time for this years storm season. With the help of CompServ and its business partner IBM, MarineMax has automated its disaster […]