I have a client that requested I implement an Inter-office IM solution for them.
I have just started looking around at the available products. and a few questions are creeping up.
scenario: it is a Windows shop, 30-computer LAN that is looking to expand in the next 2~3 years to 100 with the possibility of 2 or 3 offices in different locations.
Initially the Server-less variety of IM clients were what I had in mind because of the relatively small number of stations and the distributed nature of it i.e there is not a single point of failure even if the server hiccuped IM communication would not be affected.
conversely keeping the possible future expansion in mind … it would be an administrative pain in the neck to support each client individually across multiple sites instead of a centralized administration. and if logging of conversations is required it would be preferable to store on a central server instead of across multiple machines. the server-less variety will also be more expensive down the road when they do expand because it is licensed per copy (A stable Open source, windows based IM would be the ideal)
I want something that does not allow MSN,Yahoo like protocols or that can lock them down. Security is of course important, most of the available options implement some type of encryption, with regards to IM is there any potential security gotchas that might creep up ?
