Research Enterprise-grade Instant Messaging Platform

Instant Messaging (IM) is an Internet-based protocol application that allows one-to-one communication between users employing a variety of devices. IM application supports chat, file transfer, voice conservation, and video conference and can even communicate with mobile phone. The accelerated pace of adoption is due largely to the value of IM's feature compared with Email - the ability to access others from anywhere, using any device, at any time.However, current IM has some defects. First there exists various IM protocols, therefore users are separated. Secondly, the high security demand has prevented the IM from being deployed in enterprises. Finally, in today's information age, there are a multitude of ways to communicate with your customers including email, voice, instant message, short message services, pager and fax. Chances are your company uses all of these kinds of messages. More time is spent managing these messages than tending to mission-critical tasks at hand. The difference between business success and failure can be a company's ability to handle these different customer interactions well. By using Notification Services to unify these messages, users can take back control of their business communications. Unified messaging allows companies to gain a competitive advantage, improve customer service and employee productivity, while realizing tremendous cost savings.The Instant Messaging system designed is different from other instant messaging systems, as it is based on XML. The most promising feature of this Instant Messaging System is the XML protocol, which makes the IM platform more distributed and easily accessible to all who were formerly separated by cross platform. To enforce the security of this platform and make it suitable for enterprise, a Certificate Authority model is configured, which supports digital signature, data encryption and decryption. Finally, a Web Service based notification services model is designed, which connect Instant Messaging services, Short Message Services and Email services together.Chapter describes the need and the background of developing enterprise Instant Messaging platform. Chapter 2 provides a description of the concept and scope of the enterprise Instant Messaging application and outlines its evolution. While detailing the required technical knowledge of the IM platform, Notification Services, Security Services and Microsoft Public Key Infrastructure, XML and Web Service are introduced. Chapter 3 details the designing process of the platform and provides a comprehensive picture of the Instant Messaging application, the Notification Services and the Certificate Authority model. Chapter 4 begins with describing the XMPP protocol (Extensible Messaging and Presence Protocol), which is the XML based communication standard of the IM platform. Then the implementation of Notification Services, digital signature, data encryption and decryption is presented. Finally, Chapter 5 concludes the design of the enterprise IM platform and discusses its potential trends.