Cleartext offers hosted, standards-based IM service

Stuart Corner
Friday, 16 January 2009 08:53

Your IT - Home IT

Sydney based messaging SaaS provider, Cleartext has launched an XMPP (Extensible Messaging and Presence Protocol) based instant messaging service, ClearIM, as an alternative to public IM services with which it will interface.

The service is designed to enable users - either as individuals or members of an enterprise network - to exchange instant messages with a wide range of commercial IM services such as MSN, SIM, Google's Gtalk, Twitter and the upcoming Facebook chat service. However it is not able to interface with Skype which is a proprietary system details of which are not disclosed.
 
All users need is an XMPP client, freely available over the Internet for desktop and mobile devices. However Cleartext is working on its own Windows-based XMPP client that will have considerably more 'bells and whistles" than the open source products.

Cleartext says its service offers considerable advantages over public IM system: "Consumer oriented IM systems are a target for malicious code and can expose your organisation's intellectual property to external parties because the messages are routed out of your organisation to public servers, often in another country, even if the parties 'chatting' are within your network... By using ClearIM and IM, desktop and mobile clients you can create a controlled secure outsourced business IM solution with optional anti-virus and anti-spIM (IM spam), session logging and archiving."

The offering is similar to a hosted email service in that it enables users to have IM addresses on their own domain name, provides security (SSL) and hosted archiving of messages.

Cleartext says there is growing demand for standards based instant and micro messaging in the small to medium business market. "Cleartext is expanding its SaaS platform with an eye to the future And the inevitable move towards business use of social network based messaging and micro-blogging over XMPP." said David Banes, managing director of Cleartext.

The service is presently available in beta test mode, a full launch is about two months away. Banes told iTWire that charges would be about $1.50 per user per month for individuals, reducing to less than $1 for large customers.