The Mountain View, Calif.-based company said it is making available its enterprise-strength IM Standard Edition for free to qualified companies, in the hopes that those businesses will become comfortable enough with IM to buy its paid products.

Vayusphere's IM Standard Edition can run behind firewalls, and runs on popular desktop and mobile computing platforms including Microsoft Windows desktops, Java-enabled web browsers, Palm OS devices and WAP-enabled cell phones. The program is secure, as it supports 64- or 128-bit encryption between the IM server and IM clients. Besides internal authentication, Vayusphere IM Standard Edition integrates with popular enterprise directory services, such as LDAP and Microsoft Active Directory, for secure user authentication and authorization.

The company's IM is written in Java and supports enterprise standards, such as Web Services, XML, LDAP and Active Directory to ensure interoperability with current and future IT infrastructure. Extensive client- and server-side logging and auditing of instant messages is also included.

While enterprise IM still has security and interoperability issues to iron out going forward, the basic technology itself is starting to be a commodity. Companies that develop corporate-strength IM need to move to embedding messaging in other programs and platforms to survive. Vayusphere readily admits that it is offering its free IM product so that companies can familiarize themselves with messaging technology. In the end, Vayusphere hopes those businesses will accept its other paid products, including its new IRiS 2.0 instant-response platform.

Vayusphere's IRiS platform does add a lot of functionality to basic IM. Among the features in IRiS are a presence, availability and location (PAL) server, a response agent server and enterprise application integration. With those aspects, IRiS lets workers simultaneously collaborate with enterprise applications and co-workers in a remote and real-time basis, and enables enterprise applications to automatically and intelligently find and notify distributed workers of business problems that require instant response.

Vayusphere said IRiS provides the industry's first software platform for closed-loop instant response, because it enables both application-push (find and notify) and worker-pull (investigate and resolve)

While Vayusphere IM Standard Edition is free, IRiS pricing starts at $50,000. The free IM product comes with a one-year license for up to 200 employees, as well as limited free e-mail and Web based tech support until Sept. 1, 2002.

Vayusphere's IM Enterprise Edition, meantime, provides unrestricted user licenses, more features than the IM Standard Edition, application-programming interfaces (APIs), annual technical support and support for additional mobile devices such as PocketPC and RIM/Blackberry. The IM Enterprise Edition can be purchased as part of IRiS 2.0. Pricing details for Vayusphere's IM Enterprise Edition was not immediately available.

Bob Woods is the managing editor of InstantMessagingPlanet.