IM firm pushes into Europe

Instant messaging (IM) specialist FaceTime Communications has signed up with UK distributor e92plus to push its software across Europe.

FaceTime's software brings together IM and peer-to-peer (P2P) file sharing technology to allow virtual meetings within corporations.

The company supports and ensures interoperability between AIM, MSN, ICQ and Yahoo IM clients, and P2P engines like FastTrack (KaZaA, KaZaA Lite, Grokster) and Gnutella (Gnutella, Morpheus, Gnucleus, Xolox, Shareaza, LimeWire, BearShare).

At present 90 per cent of the software is used in financial institutions, but the retail and health sectors are also adopting the technology.

Installations are sold on a per-user basis, and servicing fees and management charges will be around 20 per cent of the cost price.

But companies are finding that both IM and P2P systems can be abused, and need to be protected against hackers.

"With IM security, file transfers can be blocked, that's not a problem," said Professor Neil Barratt, technical director at Information Risk Management.

"In terms of monitoring and checking speech content it could be very difficult. But if it reduces liability worries it might be worthwhile."

The distribution agreement covers the UK, Ireland and Benelux countries. e92plus said that it was planning initially to sign up 15 to 20 resellers which will receive preferential treatment.