Thomson Reuters Revolutionises Instant Messaging as a Corporate Tool

Reuters Messaging Interchange launches as the first single-link and multi-vendor Enterprise Instant Messaging hub in collaboration with Cisco, IBM and Microsoft

London – Thomson Reuters today announced the launch of Reuters Messaging (RM) Interchange , which for the first time allows Enterprise Instant Messaging (EIM) users to connect and communicate with colleagues and counterparts by using one link - regardless of corporate or technology boundaries, as with email or telephone interaction.

RM Interchange is the first global instant messaging hub that connects Thomson Reuters RM with the leading EIM systems - Cisco’s Jabber XCP, IBM Lotus’ Sametime and Microsoft’s LCS/OCS. Users of these systems, the largest and most influential in the EIM space, can now connect with over 5,000 external organisations and add their business contacts to a global external community.

Unlike existing federation gateways, RM Interchange is the first to enable businesses worldwide to federate without the need to establish individual links between them. To interconnect hundreds or thousands of different instant messaging customers can be a time consuming venture for an organisation’s IT department. With the RM Interchange service, businesses can now reach over IM a multitude of other companies with a single link.

The ability to communicate instantly and to display a presence indicating users’ availability to communicate has made IM a hugely successful communication tool. RM Interchange offers carrier-grade connectivity for IM across the corporate community, delivering a secure and reliable hub for businesses across all sectors, including finance, legal and healthcare. Customers connecting to RM Interchange are also automatically connected to the Reuters Messaging community including over 130,000 end-users in 5,000 firms worldwide, and will be listed on the inter-company community directory enabling users to quickly find counterparts, potentially creating the world’s largest business IM community.

David Gurle , Global Head of Collaboration Services at Thomson Reuters, added: “The sharing of accurate and timely market information is never more vital than at times of heightened economic volatility. Over the last few years IM has matured and become the nerve system of many financial institutions to conduct business decisions, progressively replacing email. However, corporate IM deployments have not yet fully used their potential to enable their users to reach their counterparts and customers in other organisations.”

“This has now been addressed with the launch of RM Interchange. Users across the enterprise will now benefit not only from instant communication with colleagues and external contacts but from the safety of comprehensive security and compliance functionality, therefore truly tapping the full potential of IM within the corporate domain”, said Gurle.

About Reuters Messaging
Reuters Messaging enables financial professionals to communicate instantly with colleagues and customers while addressing the business, security and regulatory requirements of financial institutions. It features premium group collaboration capabilities through chat rooms and enriched market data sharing capabilities such as file sharing, pre-formatted financial forms, and image sharing. Reuters Messaging also has a centralised dashboard interface which enables users to view and manage all incoming emails, instant messages, and chat room messages. This platform is specifically designed for financial professionals and is built on top of Microsoft’s EIM technology.