AOL turns face and integrates with Oulook through plug-in
Tags :Announcement
This is an interesting twist as we saw Microsoft
try to pry
their way with LCS almost
a year ago (where the heck is that bulldozer of a product right now in
deployment anyway?). But with the lack of interest still blossoming
into a dead product, Intellisync creates
and launches an integration point
for Microsoft Outlook and AIM. Plus the loss of Sametime and AOL
connectivity in 6.5.1 release.
Basically you will get awareness in the address fields (sounds like Notes/Sametime
to me) and in vcards with the little AIM 'running man' icon. Almost
like what you see for my awareness on the left of this posting.
In addition to gathering and providing presence information,
the plug-in also serves a marketing function: Once it has completed a scan
of the user's Outlook contact list and offered to import matches into the
user's AIM buddy list, it provides a second list of users that are unregistered
with the AIM service and offers to send invitations to them to join.
I see value in scanning my mailfile and building a list off of that for
a possible buddy section. Emailing everyone is not necessary in my
eyes, and what if they cannot relate certain IM names with the sender of
an email. How many of us have AOL IM names that have nothing to do
with email addresses? Many of us I can imagine will never match,
or worse yet, have multiple IM accounts.
I don't even need to say where this goofy quote comes from, ok I
will. Radicati Group. Where else!
"It's functionality they should be offering natively
if they can," he said, noting that Microsoft has largely dominated
in terms of basic integration between IM and other applications, and presents
a challenge to AOL's ability to penetrate the enterprise market.
I am beginning to think they have never seen or heard of Notes and Sametime.
The biggest benefit I do see ifs with Outlook running in lots of desktops,
and this being a plug-in, there could be some good and easy penetration
without AOL having to join the fight for enterprise IM space.
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On Monday, February 28th, 2005 by Chris Miller
