Enterprise Instant Messaging

Brosix Enterprise Messaging Wins, Places in Best IM Client Competition

2009-04-06T11:54:00.000-07:00

About.com recently announced the results of their 2009 Best IM Client Competition which generated thousands of nominations and votes. Brosix Enterprise Messaging was a surprise victor in two categories and placed in the top three in three other categories. Brosix was going up against companies such as Microsoft, Google, and Yahoo.

Brosix won "Best Instant Messaging Feature" for their Whiteboard feature. About.com's Instant Messaging Editor Brandon De Hoyos had this to say in the results page, "This exciting feature allows Brosix users to draw diagrams, images and other visuals to help Brosix’s largely business-based user illustrate their points. Paired with other low-cost conferencing tools, Whiteboard can help make business communications easier and more affordable over similar web-conferencing tools available on the Internet."

Brosix also emerged victorious in the "Developers of the Year" contest which lead to Brandon writing, "Founded in 2006, Brosix’s developers at software creator D-Bross, of Bulgaria, worked to build one of the most versatile, efficient and cost-effective IM clients for business. Today, their client is becoming more and more popular in businesses across North America and around the globe.

Offering businesses and organizations the opportunity to operate their own, private, secure IM network while also saving them time and money with their easy-to-use client, Brosix has built a niche for itself where fewer clients are able to tread."

Brosix also placed in the top three for the "2009 Best IM Client" and "Best Independent IM Client". The other result for Brosix was 2nd in "Most Improved Instant Messaging Clients".

"These results are a credit to the entire Brosix team. We've been working extremely hard to build the best enterprise messaging client that we can. We are proud of what we have accomplished thus far and look forward to continuing to work on Brosix for years to come as we build the best enterprise messaging client for businesses the world over," remarked Stefan Chekanov, one of the founders of Brosix.

Founded in 2006, Brosix offers both a secure enterprise messaging client and a free instant messaging version for Windows-based computers, with a Mac version on the way. For more information visit http://www.brosix.com.

For further details on the contest go to: http://im.about.com/od/imreviews/ss/bestimclients09.htm

No Spam.

2009-02-10T11:21:00.000-08:00

I am not a fan of spam. I never enjoyed the "meat" that my parents used to serve me when I was younger and I am not a fan of "spam" email either. Most stats I have seen shown an extraordinarily low response to spam emails yet companies persist in sending them out. Spam comments are also something webmasters and bloggers have to deal with ALL of the time. Every day it seems that I have to clean out five or more spam comments from my own personal blog and on corporate blogs the number can be far higher.

Even free IM clients like Yahoo Messenger and AOL Instant Messenger have become breeding grounds for spammers of late which is potentially even more obnoxious than spam emails frankly.

So what is the point? If you have a Brosix Messaging network set up you won't have to worry about spam unless you think Frank from accounting is going to suddenly have the urge to lead you to random websites for cash payments.

Lack of spam is yet another reason why Brosix, quite simply, is one of the best tools that you could use with your business.

: Brosix = NO Spam.

Best IM Client

2009-01-26T23:54:00.000-08:00

About.com - a New York Times company, not relevant to the post but something I find interesting - has opened up the nominations for best Instant Messenger client. If you believe, as we do, that Brosix deserves to be nominated please follow the link and fill out the form:

About.com Best IM Client Contest!

I am sure that this blog will win a Webby when those roll around as well, right? In all seriousness though - go nominate Brosix and tell your friends!

Brosix improves communication in companies

2008-11-12T04:49:00.000-08:00

Brosix offers a unique Instant Messaging service to companies and organizations that seek for secure and controlled communication over the Internet.

Just go to Brosix.com web site and create your Instant Messenger in a minute. Your Instant Messenger needs servers to operate on the Internet. To make things easier for you, we host your Instant Messaging Network on our optimized servers so you don't need to worry about server maintenance and configuration.

Upon the registration you get a special build for you of Brosix application and a web control panel.

You give the application to all of your employees, colleagues, customers, partners and whoever you want to communicate with. They install it on their computers and will be able to connect and use Brosix from different places all around the world - your offices (you may have more than one office), people's homes, airports etc.

If you have Brosix on your laptop, you will be able to use it in the office, will be able to use it when you are at home, will be able to use it when you are in another state or country. All this is possible without configuring your office infrastructure. You don't need to install and configure anything on your servers as we already deployed all necessary components on our optimized servers. The only thing you need in order to use Brosix is to have an Internet connection on your computers.

This provides great flexibility in the ways Brosix is used and at the same time it keeps all the communication safe as all communication channels are properly encrypted.

The ways you can use Brosix to communicate are:

Text chat with rich text formatting
Text conferences
Voice chat
Video chat
File Transfer
Screen-shot
Co-Browse
Whiteboard
Voice Conference
Voice Mail
Screen Sharing

More about each of these can be found at Brosix features.

Now, a few words about the web control panel. It gives you a full control over your Instant Messaging Network.

Add/remove users. You can disable new user registrations and this way control who is allowed to use your Brosix.
Modify user contact lists and control who can communicate with who.
Enable/disable features of Brosix application for each user. For example, you may allow some users to use File Transfer and disallow them use Video. You can allow others use Video and disallow Voice.

Optimizing communication in your organization is just few clicks away - go to Brosix.com web site, create your Instant Messaging Network in a minute and start using it right away with all rich features and secured communication channels.

Corporate Instant Messaging means fuel-efficiency

2008-11-10T09:16:00.000-08:00

A recent survey has found that there are more solutions to high fuel cost issues than it seems at first glance. It was conducted with 120 small and medium-sized enterprises, which were asked how they tried to manage the effects of the global credit crunch and fight for survival in the very threatening today’s business environment.

The survey elicited some very interesting results, such as:

- changing working hours depending on the daylight saving time to cut electricity costs

- using small font for printouts to reduce stationery expenses

- reducing office premises and introducing home working and hotdesking

One noticeable trend is the preference of both business owners and employees to work remotely and thus do away with the daily need to take long car trips to and from work. The home working practice is facilitated by modern affordable business solutions, such as special corporate instant messengers (like Brosix Enterprise Instant Messenger) that offer both absolute information security and a wide range of options that make communication easier and more efficient despite the great distances. It seems that the Internet will, afterward, point to the solution of today’s biggest problem of business. Products such as Brosix are just the beginning – it combines the traditional features of free public messengers with additional extras such as Voice Chat, Video Chat, File Transfer, Co-Browse, Whiteboard, Screenshot, Screen Sharing, Voice Mail, Voice Conference to make business communication easier and less expensive than ever.

This blog has been moved

2008-10-27T01:45:00.000-07:00

We have moved this blog to a new address

http://blog.brosix.com

Why choose secure instant messaging?

2008-10-22T15:17:00.000-07:00

Communication via the Internet has now become essential for most businesses. It is faster, reliable, and less expensive as compared to traditional media such as the telephone. And while e-mail is confidently heading towards its 40th anniversary, instant messengers are a relatively new development that allows businesses to easily keep in touch with all their staff and contacts – a necessary business tool in today’s dynamic corporate environment.

While many companies use free public instant messengers, there are many risks related to that. Security is not guaranteed, there is a threat of viruses, and technical support is practically nonexistent. That is why many businesses are beginning to realize the need of investing in a enterprise instant messenger in order to ensure business security and performance.

Brosix Enterprise Instant Messenger is one of the leading products that have been developed in this area. By registering for Brosix, businesses create their own private network, which is hosted on Brosix’s own servers. This network can be easily managed via a web-based Administration console, thus allowing clients to have full control, manage contact lists, block users, etc. As the network is private, there is an automatic guarantee that all messages, files, and video or voice requests come from authorized users, thus keeping the risk of viruses and spyware down to a minimum.

The Brosix business instant messenger solution provides powerful collaboration tools to help organizations better manage business, client support, and office interaction. Besides text messages, the messenger also contains various other options such as Whiteboard, Co-Browse, Voice/Video chat, etc.

As the corporate instant messenger is hosted on Brosix servers, configuration and maintenance are virtually zero. Brosix operates a global servers infrastructure, and users get connected to the closest server.

Of course, one of the main advantages of this business instant messenger is security. Brosix encrypts all the traffic with 256 bit keys, and only recipients can decrypt them.

The solution has great inexpensive flat-fee pricing. The subscription fee for your network depends on the number of users registered to it. Network capacity is increased in blocks of 10, and additional subscriptions can be added at any time.

Instant Messaging in corporations - pros and cons

2008-10-19T15:21:00.000-07:00

Connecting with others via Instant Messaging (IM) is faster, more efficient and less expensive than traditional communication options. You can easily verify who is available online and eliminate downtime. This makes Instant Messengers ideal and necessary business tools.

Using public Instant Messengers like MSN, AOL, ICQ or Yahoo is an opportunity - they are free and still good enough. But there are risks associated with them, because they are not designed to meet security and privacy requirements of the business. These requirements are imposed by the high sensitivity of corporate data. Some of the problems are:

Confidentiality - Information exchanged over the public IM can leak to anyone globally. Every user can send a file in seconds to another user all over the world.
Encryption - Unencrypted data sent over the Internet can be intercepted and read by third parties.
Reduced productivity - Any user can contact you or your colleagues (employees). Generally this is not bad, but such unauthorized contacts decrease people productivity, because they are distracted and spend time in non-business communication. There is no way to manage, authenticate and authorize users that contact your organization people.
Viruses - Instant Messengers are targets for viruses and spy ware. IM is also widely used to distribute such security threats.

In order to protect the business data many companies usually do one or more of these:

Restrictions - Prohibit usage of Instant Messaging in corporate networks.
Block addresses - Corporate networks block the access to certain IP addresses and domains. Companies usually have to block a whole range of IP addresses in order to guarantee that public instant messaging systems will not be used from corporate networks.
Intranet Instant Messaging - The companies, which want to use Instant Messaging, install and maintain Instant Messaging systems inside their corporate networks. This allows organizations to benefit from some of IM advantages such as fast communication and use collaboration tools.

The real power of Instant Messaging is when it is used in geographically distributed manner. Some employees can be in one office in North America, another group could be in Europe and some people could be traveling. All of them need to communicate easily and secure.

To benefit from the full power of Instant Messaging a company has to use an Instant Messaging that works through the Internet. But maintaining own Instant Messaging infrastructure, which operates in all countries all over the world and considers different network conditions, is a task that is usually hard to deal with. That's why, according to recent researches, companies do not go and operate their own IM infrastructure.

Another option is the so-called Hosted Instant Messaging.

The Hosted Instant Messaging is very much similar to the web site and dedicated server hosting. A company rents an Instant Messaging network from a provider specialized in the area. The point is that the IM provider could operate multiple IM networks on its servers, but each IM network is isolated from the others. Very much similar with the dedicated server h osting - there are many servers in the data-center, but each of them is isolated from the others.

The key benefits with a Hosted Instant Messaging are:

The company benefits from all the advantages of Instant Messaging used on the Internet and its corporate network.
The company does not need to manage and maintain complex IM infrastructure.
Low costs to operate Instant Messaging.

How to choose a proper Enterprise Instant Messaging provider?

When looking for an Instant Messaging provider a company should consider some important points:

Security - it has two sides

Authenticity of users - since we want Instant Messaging for our company, we want to control the user participation in our network. In other words, we don't want our network to allow intruders to come, join the network and contact the users.
Encryption - we are going to use the Instant Messaging from different places all over the world - different countries, airports, shops etc. Our communication will go through many networks. We want to be sure our data is properly encrypted and only the recipient it was sent to can read it.

Configuration and maintenance - we want to spend as less time as possible in maintenance and configuration of our IM network. This is one of the reasons we are going to use a Hosted Instant Messaging. At the same time, the configuration options should be easy to use and powerful enough.

Features - the Instant Messaging has to have a rich set of features. Collaboration features are of a special interest to businesses and organizations. Some of the basic features are: text chat, voice chat and file transfer.

Connectivity - the networks, which the users connect from to the Internet and use the Instant Messenger, may apply different kinds of limits. Public places like airports, shops and Wi-Fi hot spots apply one set of policies for connections to the Internet whereas corporate networks may apply others. The Instant Messenger should be able to connect to the servers and register the user presence status (online, away or busy) in as many network configurations as possible. It should also be able to establish communication channels with the other users in order to exchange files, video and audio.

Communication speed - we need Instant Messaging that works truly in real time. We need text messages delivered fast as well as fast file transfer. This is one of the basic ideas of Instant Messaging - communicate faster.

Cost - the cost to operate and use the Instant Messenger should be clear and well defined. We would like to avoid unexpected expenses.

How to set up a picture in my Brosix profile?

2008-10-06T08:07:00.000-07:00

I have dreamed for a while to be able to set up a picture in my Brosix profile. I wanted this picture to be displayed in the Text chat window, in the Voice conference, File transfer and whenever appropriate.

Latest Brosix gives us this nice feature. You can either set up an image file or you can take a shot of yourself with the web cam (if you have a web cam installed and working on your PC).

Here are the steps to set up your picture:

1. Open Brosix main window
2. Go to Menu->Contacts->Change my details
3. On the right there are two buttons - "Browse" and a web cam button.

You can either select an image file from your computer by clicking "Browse" or you can capture an image of yourself with your web cam by clicking on the web cam button.

Brosix is portable - you can take it with you wherever you go

2008-10-03T11:13:00.000-07:00

You can install Brosix on a flash drive (USB drive) following these steps:

1. Install Brosix on a PC
2. Go to the Menu->File->Settings
3. Click on the "Install Portable" button
4. You will be asked for a folder where to install the portable version of Brosix. Select your flash drive. All of your Brosix files such as Chat History and configurations will be copied to the flash drive.

That's all. Remove the flash drive from the PC and you can take Brosix wherever you go.

New Brosix version released

2008-10-03T10:47:00.000-07:00

October 2nd, 2008 - Brosix version 2.0 was officially published.

Many improvements has been done in the area of stability and scalability of the system. Some improvements in the users interface here and there.

Some of the most important new features are:

For personal users (www.brosix.org):

Brosix is portable - You can install your Brosix on a flash drive and take it around with you.

Profile picture - You can set a picture in your profile. The picture will be displayed in the Text Chat window, in the File Transfer, in the Voice Conference and wherever appropriate.

For enterprises (www.brosix.com) - includes all the features for personal users plus:

Users Activity Log - All Instant Messaging networks can log their users activities. Users Activity Log is accessible by the network administrator from the web control panel.

Customizing features - All Instant Messaging administrators can enable and disable features for their users. Administration of the features is available in the web control panel after the administrator logs in.

Getting back in time

2008-09-30T12:57:00.000-07:00

Getting back in the old ages... In the middle of 1997 I first saw and started to use an Instant Messenger - ICQ. I felt in love and I wanted to create my own.

Well, 8 years later, after working on different projects, finally I was involved in the design and implementation of my own instant messenger.

It took long months to create the first version in 2004. As a first version, it was ugly, unstable, not working well with limited number of features. Then we spent years improving here and there, adding new features...

Finally, in the middle of 2006, almost 10 years after my dream started, we published it with the name Brosix. We published it as a product that is designed and prepared for easy creation of own instant messengers by other people. Now, everyone can jump and get his own Instant Messaging system in a minute and avoid the long process we had. Having your own Instant Messenger means that you have your own IM network. You control who can participate, what features to use etc.