Whether a team has members on the road, stationed in an off campus location, or merely don’t want to go through the trouble of booking a conference room and/or making the walk over. This article will focus on free clients using major protocols for ease of support and to ensure network uptime.

All chat solutions in this article have the following functionality (well most do): 1 on 1 text chat, group text chat, and file transferring. With collaborative needs in mind, the following features are being focused on:

• Cross platform (Win, OS X, *nix).
• Either an open or at least server deployable protocol so it can be managed (if wanted).
• Audio (and/or video) chat. The ability to “conference” is a big plus but basic one on one is useful for a travelling member or merely as a replacement for traditional phones.
• Encryption. Self explanatory.
• Whiteboard functionality. Being able to insert pictures into chat can somewhat cover this… pictures can be worth a thousand words.

This is obviously a field where we cannot list the pros and cons of every solution. Wikipedia has a chart of known clients and features, sadly audio/video support and whiteboarding is not included.

Chat Orientated Client Solutions

Both Microsoft MSN Messenger and Yahoo! Messenger meet the above requirements. While both applications are native to a Windows environment, there are either official builds or third party programs for Mac and *nix environments. Preference for either in Windows is likely to be a subjective decision, though sticking with MSN would make future adoption into Office 2007 smoother.

MSN Messenger Service

There is no official MSN client for *nix builds. MSN Messenger for Mac is not a Universal Binary so it won’t run natively on intel processors, though it will run under Rosetta emulation for PPC. Luckily despite some statements in the past Microsoft is working on universal versions of Office and Messenger for Mac, with Messenger slated for a late 2006 release. As it stands the Mac version has very limited functionality and does not meet basic criteria such as file transfers, whiteboard/picture display.

The cross-platform chat client for the MSN network that fits our needs the best is Mercury. Mercury is available in Windows, OS X, and various *nix flavors. It is one of the only third party clients to support audio/video chat (though support is “in development”), though apparently not whiteboarding.

Mac users can check the Mac Messenger Guide sadly found rather late in the research process. Check out their excellent feature comparison table

Yahoo! Messenger Service

It has roughly the same functionality as MSN and has official clients for all major platforms. A beta Universal Binary version for Macs is out which also features some catch up to windows functionality (there will be voice chat in 3.0 beta 2). The *nix builds look to be rather rudimentary in what they offer.

The whiteboard in Yahoo! is not as cleanly integrated as in MSN, you have to go to the IMVironment page and install the Doodle plug-in. As of now the IMV functionality is Windows only.

One advantage Yahoo! Messenger has (besides it’s relatively aggressive non-windows development) is the capability to “conference call” audio/video chat with multiple users (MSN Messenger is limited to one audio or video connection). It lacks the folder sharing capabilities of MSN but allow manual file transfers of up to 1GB.

Jabber Protocol

While generally not as full featured as any of the 4 major networks, Jabber is catching on quickly and it would be possible for a team or department to have their own Jabber server running to create a truly private network.

Coccinella is a free chat client aimed at collaboration and is built around the included a built-in whiteboard and group chat, though it offers no AV support. It runs on the Jabber/XMPP network.

Neos MT has all the features we’re looking for but only runs on windows.

Qnext

Qnext is an interesting solution, with cross browser support with all the features we’re looking for excepting whiteboarding as well as the ability to text message users signed onto other major IM services.

Qnext also boasts P2P capabilities (which you can set to be public or private) which could help facilitate file sharing between team members.

Voice Chat Orientated Clients

Skype is currently the most popular audio chat client, and is a cross-platform solution for those that are not concerned about whiteboards. Skype has a fairly large plugin archive for custom functionality, and has excellent NAT/firewall traversing.

Gizmo is similar to Skype, but offers some interesting additional features and is based on an open standard (SIP) which allows users of other VOIP applications to connect with Gizmo users. They currently have a plan where you can call landline and/or cell phones of other Gizmo users in 60 countries for free. This would be useful for getting someone who is seriously AFK into a voice chat conference.

Gizmo however is lacking in IM capabilities… there is no file transferring, whiteboarding or image viewing, or even group chat. Gizmo would be excellent playing a supporting role to a chat/whiteboard solution but can’t be recommended as a solution in and of itself.

Managable Server Solutions

If the amount of people involved would justify the time, money, and effort, there are enterprise IM solutions available. This infoworld article provides a solid if somewhat outdated description of the major players. There are too many private solutions to go over without delving into a second article, so I’ll briefly touch over some upcoming popular products.

Microsoft’s Office 2007 line will offer an application called Office Communicator 2007, that will offer some really rich integrative features. Along with Microsoft Exchange 2007 Unified Messaging, a Microsoft based environment will get some substantial collaborative upgrades. TMC.net’s VoIP & Gadgets Blog has a detailed (and rather critical) analysis of the upcoming release

IBM’s Lotusnotes Sametime 7.5 will be coming out shortly, and may be able to steal some of the thunder from Microsoft’s upcoming Office 2007 release, especially in non pure MS environments.

Asterisk is an open source (e.g. free) PBX server that has gained fairly widespread acceptance and legitimacy, and supports open standards such as SIP and can handle video conferencing as well.

Disregarded Protocols/Solutions

All-in-one clients like Trillian and Miranda (Windows), Adium X and Fire (Mac), and Gaim (All) are popular all-in-one solutions for text chat but they often lack stable audio/video functionality. Trillian does support Audio chat in the free version and video in pro, but there are other official solutions on Windows with full functionality.

AIM and ICQ offer similar services to MSN and Yahoo! Messengers, but they do not fit into the needs of professional collaboration quite as cleanly.

In Conclusion

In a mainly Windows based environment it would make sense to stick with MSN given the upcoming Office 2007 functionality as well as the viability of Mercury on non Windows platforms. It would be worthwhile to test audio/video support before committing as it is still a feature under development. It is worth keeping in mind that Yahoo! Messenger has a slight lead in audio chat and official non-windows support.

Skype would work as an easy chat/audio solution and has the extra advantage of there being a smaller userbase (e.g. distractions for employees on the clock). Gizmo may work better for augmenting a chat solution that has weak or poor audio capabilities.