Brief: Verizon Launches Secure IM Services For Businesses

Verizon Business unveiled its Hosted Secure Instant Messaging Service Wednesday, aimed at addressing IM security issues as the messaging technology becomes more popular among business and enterprise users.

Hosted Secure IM has been developed to help stop various cyber pestilences like worms, viruses and spim before they enter business networks.

"We are making IM a viable tool for the enterprise, while extending our collaboration and communications platform to deliver integrated IP application with enhanced functionality," said Ed McGuinness, chief marketing officer and senior vice president, Verizon Business, in a statement.

Verizon Business cited a recent report by the Gartner Group, which predicted the enterprise IM market will have a compound annual growth rate of about 20 percent through 2009. The market research firm also predicted that 90 percent of business e-mail users will have IM capability controlled by their IT operations by 2010.

Verizon Business said its new IM service is offered in two options. The Enterprise Instant Messaging product will work to secure IM communications within IT networks while Managed Public Instant Messaging will monitor the employee use of public IM systems like those offered by AOL, MSN, and Yahoo.