I
was briefed last week by Cleartext, a small Australian SaaS provider that
offers an interesting service that aggregates access to a variety of instant
messaging and social networking services.
In addition to this service, Cleartext also offers hosted email that
integrates with Microsoft Outlook, hosted email security services that includes
data leakage protection capabilities, and direct email marketing services.
Cleartext
ESM is a cloud-based XMPP router on a multi-tenant SaaS platform that allows
just about any XMPP-based client to access a wide variety of services,
including AOL Instant Messenger, Twitter, Yahoo! Messenger, ICQ, Google Talk,
FriendFeed, Apple iChat, MSN Messenger and other services. Cleartext is also developing its own desktop
client and plans to have it available later this year.
While
accessing all of these services from a single client is a nice feature of
Cleartext ESM, the real strength of the offering is its ability to provide
business-grade management capabilities, including:
·
Scanning all URLs contained in messages (including shortened URLs) for
links to sites that contain malware.
·
Archiving of all content sent through the service, so that instant
messaging conversations, Twitter posts, etc. can now be archived in a SQL
server-based repository.
·
Filtering of messages for profanity and other objectionable content that
pose a difficulty for users or their employers.
One
of the real strengths of Cleartext ESM is that it is built on XMPP, arguably
the key standard for instant messaging and social networks in general.
Cleartext
has some way to go – it is a very small company and still needs to offer its
desktop client for integration of the various social networking and instant
messaging services that it supports.
And, the archiving capability does not yet integrate with any other
archiving tools, which would make it more valuable for compliance, e-discovery,
etc. in companies that have already deployed an email-based archiving
solution. However, their technology is
clearly a very nice step forward for users who can integrate access to a
variety of social networking and presence-based communication services. It provides an even bigger benefit for
organizations that need to archive and control their users’ message content.
More
information on Cleartext is available at http://www.cleartext.com.
OR Commentary for Messaging Wire
Week of 08/24/09