"private" IM software?

[Thom2]

With a recent restructure of the internal workings of my company, the lack of communication has been taken to a whole new level. We definately need some sort of IM program and I was wondering what you folks in the IT circles use/recommend. Head honcho's definately won't go for something "open" like MSN or yahoo etc. This is going to have to be 'internal only' and at least appear to be controllable.

We currently have 9 stores and approximately 40-50 machines spread amongst those locations. We are not running any type of server whatsoever (an entirely other issue, let's not go here ). As much as I'd like to see all the stores available on an IM list, right now I'd just settle for the 12 or so machines that we have here in this location.

I'm not in charge of anything here, I'm doing this research on my own and will need to pitch it to the higher ups once I find something that seems workable. Of course when you're going rogue with something like this, the rules apply "cheap is good, free is better", otherwise the idea will get tossed.

Any Suggestions????

[crokett]

A quick google search of open source chat server turned up a lot of links. Jabber is the only one I've heard of. Never used it but some folks I know who have like it.

If you get everyone a gmail account, it automatically comes with google chat. That may not be as private as you like. Let me know - I can send you an invite and then you get 10 invites of your own to send out.

[cpritchard]

We use jabber and works very well. I am no IT guy, so cant give you any specifics

[JTimmons]

We use this at work: http://www.mirc.com/

Edit:
We have it set up privately at work, not as described on the above site. We have different channels or chat groups set up for each department or area of network responsibility. I think, not sure, in order to run it this way you'd need a server. I guess you could check that out on the boards they have and find out for sure.

[ChrisD]

My company's on Lotus Notes, so we use SameTime for IM and online conferencing.

[onedash]

mirc must be doing something right because its used by the DoD. I was pretty shocked when I saw that on a comm status board. we have other stuff too but I dont know if its even available to the public and it sure isn't close to cheap or free.

[25]

If you are using Novell for your mail, there is a IM client/server for it. We used to use it at work untill we changed mail servers.

If you use ICQ and Trillian it has a method of setting up a secure connection between the parties during a chat. I don't know if other clients support this feature but I think even the free version of Trillain supports it.

mirc works pretty well, since you can also have conference rooms setup. Since your company can host the IRC server, it's all internal so security shouldn't be a problem.

Jabber is the one I always think of if you are going the open source route, I haven't used it, just heard of it a lot.

[mac_daddy]

What about netmeeting? If you're on all Windows platforms, it's included on the machine.