AOL stopped selling its AOL Instant Messenger Enterprise Gateway on Monday, saying it will instead focus its efforts on providing business services including VoIP and web conferencing via its widely-deployed regular AIM client.
The online giant recommended IMLogic, which is offering free migration, as a suitable replacement for AIM-EG, but FaceTime says that’s essentially a marketing relationship and that its rival is not guaranteed any customers as a result.
We fully anticipate getting the lion’s share of these accounts, the company’s CTO, Jonathan Christensen told ComputerWire yesterday. He pointed out that AIM-EG was OEM’d by AOL from FaceTime’s own software, and that most customers know this.
But Christensen added that the potential customer base that could be migrated from AOL is relatively small. He would not be drawn on its exact size, but said it was smaller than FaceTime’s own customer base.
Obviously, you don’t leave a business if it’s highly successful and growing rapidly, Christensen said. However, he added: From our perspective, it’s a long-term boost and an important clarifier for the space.
