The technology is designed to provide a central means of managing all real-time IP-based communications within an enterprise. Greenwich, slated for commercial release in mid-2003, will integrate presence -- knowledge of whether a person is online and available -- into the Windows Server 2003 platform to give enterprises access to voice, video and data collaboration.

Customers can choose to either use the platform as an out-of-the-box enterprise IM solution, or as an extensible, standards-based real-time communications platform. Redmond, Wash.-based Microsoft said developers and integrators would be able to build on top of the Greenwich capabilities and modify existing applications that incorporate presence and IM functionality.

Through a partnership with IM security vendor IMlogic, the technology also supports IM logging and archiving -- an important selling point these days for enterprise instant messaging products, as corporations are becoming increasingly concerned about safeguarding intellectual property and complying with industry regulators on data security and privacy.

The technology is being targeted at organizations that already utilize instant messaging but need to secure those communications within their enterprise and with trusted partners.

As expected, the technology contains a measure of server-to-server and client-to-server compatibility through its support of Session Initiation Protocol (SIP), which is already a part of Windows XP's Windows Messenger client.

Microsoft has said that Greenwich fully integrates with its IT security management structure, and adds protection to unencrypted text traveling across the Internet. Additionally, it provides standards support for SSL encryption, Digest and NTLM/Kerberos authentication.

Implications for Microsoft's IM products, and the industry

Greenwich represents an evolution for Microsoft's approach to enterprise instant messaging. The company has for three years fielded an EIM product in the form of Exchange Instant Messaging -- a module to the company's popular Exchange 2000 Server. But with the advent of Greenwich, the offering will no longer be included in Exchange Server, which is slated to receive an update by the end of the year. (However, the company will continue marketing a separate Exchange Conferencing Server, supporting multi-party audio and video conferencing.)

Microsoft also is approaching the enterprise IM space from the public network arena. This quarter, it's expected to roll out MSN Messenger Connect, a proxy that sits behind the corporate firewall and provisions federated authentication and namespaces -- ensuring, ostensibly, that corporate IT has control over enterprise MSN users' usernames and permissions, and that users are who they say they are online.

Last week, the company also debuted its beta of "threedegrees," the codename for a youth-focused collaborative software application that uses peer-to-peer technology to share music, photos, and animations. The product launch -- and the underlying technology, APIs of which became exposed to developers only in February -- could signal the start of Microsoft's play in the P2P-based collaboration space, representing a third approach to enterprise groupware.

"It took a long time to happen, but it's scary to see Microsoft mobilized like this," said an enterprise IM vendor who attended the Greenwich developer conference in January.

For the time being, these three areas will remain separate. But connectivity and interoperability between MSN Messenger Connect and Greenwich is likely in coming months, with Connect adopting some of Greenwich's features.

"We'll eventually be moving and using some of the interfaces provided by the Greenwich platform," said MSN Lead Product Manager Larry Grothaus. "It will provide us better access into Active Directory, and a more integrated experience."

Grothaus added that MSN Connect will eventually support SIP, although that functionality will have to be enabled by Microsoft's Independent Software Vendor (ISV) partners.

"We'll still be talking the MSN protocol ... but our ISVs who are part of the MSN Connect offering, they will enable translation from the MSN Protocol to SIP," he said. "We'll be able to interoperate with the SIP environment directly."

However, he said it was too early to say when such Connect-Greenwich links might be in place.

It's also too early to say how Greenwich will impact the landscape of enterprise instant messaging vendors, partners, and clients. Still, a number of industry-watchers say that corporate buyers and integration partners are increasingly wary of doing business with other EIM vendors -- particularly the smaller specialist firms -- until they get a better feel for Greenwich's viability.

And it could be a while before the industry even has to face that question, since Greenwich requires Windows 2003 Server, which is expected to ship next month.

"There's a fairly long time until there's a market opportunity there for developers and ISVs," said another developer, working at a firm that creates third-party IM-based applications. "Plus, it looks like [Greenwich] may not have as large a market size as we initially thought. How long will it be for companies to trade up from Windows 2000 or NT to 2003?"

The developer also said adoption of the current version of Greenwich could be hindered by a number of shortcomings.

"The things I found pretty disappointing were things like meeting support -- they support peer-to-peer for one-to-one video and things, but not one-to-many. With [Lotus] Sametime, you can show a PowerPoint to 30 people in a group. That won't be possible with the server in the first version."

And it isn't clear that the first version of Greenwich will deliver full SIP and SIP for Instant Messaging and Presence Leveraging Extensions (SIMPLE) interoperability, he said. "They were calling it a SIP/SIMPLE standard, but they kept saying 'we have to extend it here.' Still, [Greenwich] looks very easy to integrate with -- being able to reuse their user interface for chat and things."

Spokespeople from Microsoft were not available to respond to the criticism at press time, but the company is believe to have had had a number of problems with its SIP development in recent months. It also has said that a second version of Greenwich now in the works will add still greater collaborative functions -- but has not elucidated what those might be.

Christopher Saunders is managing editor of InstantMessagingPlanet.com. Thor Olavsrud is a senior editor at internetnews.com.