Presence Networks has made improvements to its Networker product.
Interestingly, the company provides unified communications as a service and, in this new version of Networker, offers integration with public instant messaging (IM) services such as Windows Live Messenger and Yahoo! Other solutions tend to use federation as the method of communicating between public and corporate systems. This can leave organizations exposed to security risks and other vulnerabilities found in the public IM environment.
Using Networker 4.0, the public IM gateway communicates with the Networker server rather than directly with the client, eliminating peer-to-peer communications. The Networker server is able to ensure the communication meets with an organization’s security and usage policies.
Given that the use of IM is widespread and growing, there is an urgent need for IT and security departments to regain control over a communications area that has so far been mainly driven by individual user communities, and where necessary corporate information and disclosure policies need to be brought up-to-date. The technology should not be dismissed as just another consumer-oriented communications channel that needs to be blocked. It is a useful presence-based technology that is capable of indicating when a contact is available.
Presence functionality plays a fundamental part in corporate communication solutions. Most of the workforce have a number of touch points, such as multiple phones, email, SMS and, increasingly, IM. Unfortunately, nobody has visibility of which communication channel a recipient is available on at any particular time, and there is no unique identifier for an individual. This leads to missed calls, numerous voicemails, and the prevalence of phone tag, all of which are very inefficient uses of time. Unified collaborative communications, including IM, will enable improved productivity across and between organizations.
IT is notorious for using a sledgehammer to crack a nut. Instead of trying to control and manage the use of public communication technologies, there is the propensity to ban them outright. It is high time IT stopped saying no and became an enabler for the organization. Solutions such as Presence Network’s Networker allow employees to interact with all stakeholders, and IT to provide communication services that meet the needs of the workforce.
Source: OpinionWire by Butler Group (www.butlergroup.com)
