e/pop Secure IM FAQ

How does corporate IM or Enterprise IM differ from consumer-oriented products?
Consumer IM products are often distributed free of charge, in a marketing effort to increase brand awareness and usage of the vendors' email and Internet products. These products provide limited functionality without real regard to the manageability, security and scalability issues facing today's businesses.

In the corporate market, however, IM is just one component of more comprehensive product offerings that address the need for real-time communications software for the enterprise. These solutions allow users to communicate and collaborate in real-time, while protecting critical corporate data. The feature set of an enterprise-level product will extend beyond traditional IM to include text-based chat conferencing, presence management, application sharing, advanced encryption for maximum security, voice over IP conferencing and Citrix and Terminal Server support. In addition, strong administrative and audit capabilities must be included for corporate users.

What is e/pop Secure IM?
It is a secure IM software product designed for multi-office, business and government networks. Our customers install e/pop software on their own networks to provide employees-only, secure IM and alert messaging for key departments or throughout their entire organization. e/pop is distinguished by editorial awards for Enterprise IM, comprehensive security, IT controls for directory integration and client lock-down, and ease of installation (no dependencies) and maintenance.

Does it employ a peer-to-peer or client/server architecture?
For distributed networks e/pop uses pure TCP/IP and client/server to communicate. e/pop also supports multi-server installations (server-to-server connections) to maximize local performance for distributed call centers and other multi-office scenarios.

What are the business benefits of e/pop secure IM?
e/pop improves productivity by reducing the delays traditionally associated with email, phone, fax, voice mail and in-person meetings. It provides employees with a secure environment to immediately connect with each other regardless of their physical location. e/pop is often the only method of notifying several people, groups, or the entire company of urgent matters, ultimately improving safety, operations and customer service. In addition, combinations of e/pop secure IM and web/video conferencing allow employees anywhere to meet online at the click of a button, substantially reducing problem/case resolution times, improving customer service and eliminating the expense and personal hassle of travel-time for in-person meetings.

Does e/pop actually work in real-time?
Yes. e/pop uses secure TCP/IP, client-to-server, bi-directional connections for all communications. Response time is a function of your network and varies a few milliseconds above ping time between clients and servers. In virtually every customer installation, response time is sub-second.

What benefits does e/pop offer to IT departments?
e/pop excels in administration and management for technology departments. e/pop reduces IT liability and hassle-time by eliminating unsecure and hacker-prone consumer IM services from company networks. e/pop saves IT time by being dramatically easier to install and maintain than other enterprise instant messaging product (e/pop has no dependencies).  In addition, e/pop can be used for IT-specific applications such as helpdesk communications and urgent company-wide IT bulletins (e.g., email server is down, we know, it will be back up by noon).

Security is extremely important to my company, how can I be sure that e/pop is secure and virtually impenetrable?
e/pop was designed from the ground up to be the most secure and flexible real-time communications product. It communicates using RSA for authentication, digital certificates and signing and RC4, DES, Triple-DES or AES for encryption.

Does e/pop work only within a LAN or will it scale from LAN to WAN?
e/pop is designed to scale over LANs, WANs, over remote connections, multiple offices and the Internet. e/pop is one of the few enterprise instant messaging (EIM) products that supports multi-server installations using server-to-server connections called Pipes.

Can e/pop leverage our established internal network directories and enable end-user customization at the same time?
Yes. Most businesses with deployed networks already have an established organizational structure defined in their respective network directory using Netware NDS, Microsoft NT domains or Microsoft ADS. e/pop 3.0 is able to leverage the group, organizational and user information defined within these established network directories as the foundation of its presence and identity system. This can be used exclusively or combined with e/pop's own organizational system.

What are the system requirements?
e/pop operates on all Windows 32-bit platforms, including Windows 95, 98,  NT, 2000 Workstation, ME and XP. Advanced Server, and Server 2003. Specific support for Citrix and Terminal Server is also provided.

Do you still sell Winpop Plus?
No, Winpop Plus was discontinued several years ago. It was replaced by e/pop real-time software, which includes e/pop secure instant messaging, alert messaging, web and video conferencing.