Public IM Connectivity

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Overview: Public IM Connectivity provides ability to an organization to let the LCS or OCS enabled users to talk to the Public IM providers. These Public IM providers are MSN, Yahoo and AOL.

Benefit: Most of the organizations don’t want to allow their users to be able to login in messengers of different Public IM provider. There are many reasons behind it. Few of them are as follows:

Organization might not want all of them to be able to chat with PIC providers.

The PIC clients don’t offer encryption of data.

IM administrators don’t get ability to log and archive the transactions.

Ability to log and archive transactions are often required to meet the record    retention or disclosure requirements.

Public IM clients not necessarily meet mot corporate security standards.

Public IM clients require users from organization to run multiple clients in order to talk to the Public IM clients’ users.

Handling multiple IM clients by a corporate user reduces its productivity.

Handling multiple IM clients by a corporate user creates more problems for the desktop management team of any organization.

Obviously PIC provides ability to use one IM client (office communicator) to talk to the Public IM clients.

Once PIC is enabled, you can control enabling any user to be able to talk to the Public IM providers.

Note: Using the new Microsoft Office Communicator 2005 client, Live Communications Server-enabled users will have a single client experience for adding contacts, sending IM, and sharing presence information with users on MSN, AOL, and Yahoo! networks.

Getting Public IM Connectivity license:

Microsoft Volume License customers can order Live Communications Server 2005 Public IM Connectivity licenses for their existing Live Communications Server users. Public IM Connectivity licenses are available on a per-user, per-month subscription and are additional to the Live Communications Server Client Access License (CAL). Public IM Connectivity has two licensing components associated with its use, a Services Subscription License (SSL) and a User Subscription License (USL).

Process to get your domain provisioned for Public IM Connectivity:

-      To make a provisioning request, visit this Web site and then click the ' Public IM Connectivity Provisioning ' link on the right.

For detailed process follow this forum…

When provisioning is finished, customers can configure connectivity on their Live Communications Server or Office Communication Server servers and users should be able to exchange IM messages with users on the America Online (AOL), MSN, and Yahoo networks. 

Public IM Connectivity Pricing:

It depends on Volume Licensing discounts. The price varies from 1$ to 2$ per user per month.

Can we control the PIC communications?

Yes… You can enable PIC per user basis. You can also control which Public IM provider or all Public IM providers a user can talk to.

Limitation:

When a user is enabled for Yahoo, this user would be able to talk to any yahoo users. Same is applicable with other Public IM providers.

Supported Public IM Domains:

When you get provision for PIC and enable a corporate user to be able to talk to the AOL user, the corporate user can talk to the IM users with following Public IM domains.

aol.com, icq.com, love.com, mac.com

When you get provision for PIC and enable a corporate user to be able to talk to the Yahoo user, the corporate user can talk to the IM users with following Public IM domains.

Yahoo.com

When you get provision for PIC and enable a corporate user to be able to talk to the MSN user, the corporate user can talk to the IM users with following Public IM domains.

br.live.com, hotmail.co.il, hotmail.co.jp, hotmail.co.th, hotmail.co.uk, hotmail.com, hotmail.com.ar, hotmail.com.tr, hotmail.es, hotmail.de,  hotmail.fr, hotmail.it, live.at, live.be, live.ca, live.cl, live.cn, live.co.in, live.co.kr, live.co.uk, live.co.za, live.com, live.com.ar,  live.com.au, live.com.co, live.com.mx, live.com.my, live.com.pe, live.com.ph, live.com.pk, live.com.pt, live.com.sg, live.com.ve, live.de, live.dk , live.fr, live.hk, live.ie, live.in, live.it, live.jp, live.nl, live.no,  live.ph, live.ru, live.se, livemail.com.br, livemail.tw, messengeruser.com , msn.com, passport.com, sympatico.ca, tw.live.com, webtv.net, windowslive.com , windowslive.es 

IP Address configured on the Public IM Edge server:

MSN Access Proxy\Edge Server:  

65.54.227.249

Yahoo Access Proxy\Edge Servers:  

76.13.22.8, 76.13.22.9, 76.13.22.10, 76.13.22.11, 98.136.47.8, 98.136.47.9, 98.136.47.10, 98.136.47.11

AOL Access Proxy\Edge Servers:

64.12.162.248, 205.188.153.55 

Related Links:

Known PIC Issues