Oracle Corp. has licensed Jabber, Inc.'s Extensible Communications Platform (XCP) -- ostensibly for use in the closely anticipated new version of the Oracle Collaboration Suite.

In the Q3 filing of Jabber's parent, Webb Interactive Services, earlier this month, the Denver-based firm said it ultimately plans to receive about $4.5 million in revenue from the deal with Oracle, which includes both licenses and professional services.

The move comes as Oracle is preparing to launch instant messaging in Release 3 of the suite, due out sometime in the first half of 2004. With the suite, the Redwood City, Calif. enterprise software giant hopes to rival offerings from Microsoft and IBM Lotus.

Still, it's not clear at this point whether Oracle will definitively bake features from Jabber's XCP into the final version of Release 3. Oracle spokesperson Jill Schroeder said that the company is "continually reviewing technologies to determine their potential to enhance Oracle products and offerings."

Additionally, Webb reported in the filing that XCP has yet to meet unspecified "acceptance criteria" to complete the deal. However, the filing did add that Jabber anticipates those criteria being satisfied in fourth quarter, when it will book the bulk of the revenue from the sale.

Oracle executives also reaffirmed the company's pledge for open standards support. XCP, is based on the open-source Extensible Messaging and Presence Protocol (XMPP), also known as the Jabber protocol.

"Oracle is committed to open standards support in Collaboration Suite," said Sunir Kapoor, vice president for Oracle's enterprise messaging and collaboration business. "This includes both XMPP and SIP/SIMPLE for instant messaging. Oracle also enters into licensing agreements with many companies in the course of developing products [and] Collaboration Suite is no exception."


AOL Widens Multi-Location AIM Routing

America Online is expanding its Instant Messaging Routing feature to more users, enabling them to receive messages simultaneously on multiple devices.

The service was never formally announced by AOL, and has been in limited use since summer, spokespeople said.

It works by allowing users to log in to the AIM service from the same account, at multiple locations -- using either PCs or mobile devices, or on different clients on the same PC. Then, messages received by the account are forwarded to each location, except for any that are set to "Away" or which have gone idle. If all locations are set "Away," then messages are forwarded globally.

Users typically first hear of this unadvertised feature through an IM sent out by the AIM system, which tells users that their Screen Name "is now signed into AOL Instant Messenger in 2 locations. Click here for more information." Clicking on the message leads users to a Web page explaining the feature.

The capability to route messages simultaneously to multiple devices or locations could have important ramifications in the IM wars, as neither of AOL's chief competitors, Yahoo! Messenger and Microsoft's MSN) offer similar capabilities. (Nor does AOL's ICQ service, for that matter.)

Smaller players in instant messaging, most notably, those supporting the open-source Jabber/Extensible Messaging and Presence Protocol (XMPP) movement, offer message routing through what are known as XMPP "resources."

Additionally, all three major public IM providers do support some measure of availability-based routing for alerts, but not necessarily IMs.


Validian to Launch Flash Communicator

Validian has slated a late December launch for Flash Communicator, its implementation of secure instant messaging for compact "flash media" devices -- like USB keychains, digital camera memory sticks, and other media.

Flash Communicator is a version of Validian's Secure Instant Messenger app specially productized for lightweight storage devices. Flash Communicator, like SIM, provides for rich text communication, message exchange, image and content distribution, and file transfer.

In theory, providing SIM on a USB drive or digital memory card means that a user could literally take their IM account with them, at all times. Thus, they'd be able to log on and chat securely from a hotel room or Internet cafe without fear of leaving traces of their data on a host computer. When they're through IMing and sharing files, the user simply removes the device -- and with it, all records of their communications.

Validian envisions the software being repackaged by USB makers or, especially, digital camera manufacturers. In such a scenario, Flash Communicator would enable makers of digital camera media to provide their users with a means to easily and securely transport pictures in real-time from the camera, when hooked into a PC, to printing services or other recipients. Users would benefit from increased ease in transporting pictures, while storage manufacturers benefit by gaining a competitive differentiator for their offerings.


Sybari Launches IM Antivirus Solution for LCS

Security player Sybari Software officially announced Antigen 7.5 for Instant Messaging, its offering for virus scanning and message content scanning for Microsoft Office Live Communications Server 2003. Microsoft first announced that it was working with Sybari for the offering during October's Instant Messaging Planet Conference & Expo.

Antigen 7.5 for IM enhances the centralized security and message logging capabilities of Microsoft's Live Communications Server with policy enablement tools -- administrators can use Antigen to apply content and file filtering policies.

Features include real-time virus and content scanning, and administrators can configure document filtering by file type, size, and name. Additionally, admins can be notified about incident via e-mail, while end-users are alerted via an IM interactive agent, or "bot."

Antigen 7.5 also offers a centralized tool for deploying, administering and reporting on multiple IM servers, and integration with Sybari's Multiple Scan Engine Manager for advanced detection of viruses.