A screen capture of Concentric's new Business Manager service.
In an email Q&A with the WHIR, Concentric’s senior product manager discusses the Concentric Business Messenger, the company’s latest instant messaging solution designed for small and medium-sized businesses.
(WEB HOST INDUSTRY REVIEW) — Real-time instant messaging has forever changed the way we communicate, and its impact stretches to include the business world.
But with many dangerous viruses and malware being distributed through public chat services such as Microsoft’s MSN Messenger and Google’s Gmail Chat, users are frequently at risk to security threats. This has the potential to cost a company financially in lost productivity.
For this reason, Concentric recently launched the Concentric Business Messenger, an enterprise-class, encrypted and fully managed messaging and collaboration solution designed for small and medium-sized businesses.
The web-based solution ensures that all communications performed via Concentric Business Messenger are encrypted with Secure Socket Layer, so that only the participating party will be able to access the messages.
And since Concentric Business Messenger runs separately from any email platform, it lets users operate their own email servers, host their email elsewhere or use any Concentric email service.
The solution can also be fully integrated with the Concentric Gateway, combining the instant messaging program with Concentric’s email, web hosting or suite of hosted IT services.
In an email Q&A with the WHIR, Randy Ide, Concentric’s senior product manager talks about the company’s new instant messaging solution, Concentric Business Manager, and how it can benefit small and medium-sized businesses.
WHIR: Why did Concentric decide to develop this service?
Randy Ide: Concentric added this service to offer our SMB customers an easy way to a have a secure and private instant messaging service. This is also a natural extension of our Hosted IT services including our business class messaging services giving our customers a one stop shop. Business Messenger further differentiates and adds value to our Hosted Exchange service as we bundle it at no additional charge for our Hosted Exchange users.
Can you discuss the kinds of security features that Concentric Business Messenger offers?
RI: Our SMB customers have the same concerns about security of larger organizations including the potential for viruses to enter the network through chat clients or for confidential or private information to “leak” via chat. With Concentric Business Messenger, the IT manager can limit chat to just among the company’s employees thus reducing or eliminating these security risks. Best of all, the service can be added with a few clicks of a mouse with no hardware to install or server software to license.
With so many different free instant messaging services available, why would SMBs choose to pay for such a service?
RI: The main reason is to maintain privacy and security. The IT manager can restrict conversations and chat rooms to just company employees and all chat conversations are SSL encrypted for security. We also allow the IT manager to control how and when software updates are applied to the chat client which is important in environments where the IT departments “locks” the software image on the computer and does not give users administrative access to the computer. This way the IT department can control how and when software updates occur for consistency with their internal policies.
Will this be offered as an add-on service or included with Concentric’s hosting packages?
RI: Concentric Business Messenger will be included at no additional charge for our Hosted Exchange users and a $1 per user per month add-on to all other services.
Why is Concentric targeting SMBs, which typically have smaller operating budgets and fewer employees than, say, enterprises, which arguably have a greater use for an intra-office instant messaging service?
RI: The service is extremely affordable for SMBs which have the same needs for the productivity benefits of instant messaging and the same security concerns in using a public chat service as an enterprise. Concentric Business Messenger is also a natural extension of the messaging and other Hosted IT services we already deliver to SMBs. While the needs for a private and secure instant messaging service are similar between SMBs and enterprises, enterprises typically have more complex integration requirements such as tight integration with a common authentication system, or integration with other IT systems.
Enterprises have the IT resources to run an on premise based solution solutions such as IBM Lotus Sametime and manage the integration requirement with their other systems. SMBs, however, do not have the same resources so the start up and on-going maintenance costs for an on premise solution are often out of reach for SMBs. Business Messenger, on the other hand, is a fully hosted solution, with no hardware or software to buy and can be implemented easily at an affordable per user per month fee.
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