Users of Brosix Enterprise have access to many top level features. One of the most popular is the networks feature that allows you to create your own instant messaging network.

With the ability to create your own network, regardless of the size, it is simple to stay in touch with the right people while avoiding others. Along with this, you can be rest assured that only authorized users have the ability to join your network.

Are you looking for a convenient and secure way for employees and other group members to communicate, while still staying focused on business? If so, a secure network from Brosix is the way to go.

You can invite an unlimited number of members to your network. From there, a fully functional web control panel allows you to set user-level permissions, track communication amongst users, enable/disable features, and much more.

Why rely on a public instant messenger when you don’t have to? With the Brosix networks feature you can create a highly secure, private network that is sure to increase efficiency and improve productivity.

More information about the networks feature can be found at
http://www.brosix.com/enterprise-features/networks/

Effective November 1st, Brosix updated its free trial program.

All new instant messaging networks created after this date receive a free trial with these parameters:

• 30 days free of charge
• 1000 – one thousand user accounts
• all features activated

Our potential customers can try all Brosix features for 30 days completely free, with no charges and obligations. The 1000 user accounts allow small and big companies do a relaxed trial and make proper decisions.

When the free trial expires, networks can order as many user accounts as they want. At any time they can add and remove user licenses and this way control their expenses.

To get the free trial, just go to the web site and after a few clicks your private IM network will be up and running - http://www.brosix.com/signup/

A business instant messenger is a great productivity tool for any office. The urgency of the current economy to cut costs has made the convenience of a quality instant messenger service even more valuable.  Having a business instant messenger with the right features will allow you and your employees to cut travel costs and time incurred for business meetings by allowing attendees to participate right from their desks!

Brosix has all the features you need to save travel dollars and free up time to make your employees more productive. While not all business travel can be avoided, many times voice or video chat combined with the revolutionary screen sharing and whiteboard features that Brosix Instant Messenger includes will offer a valuable alternative. Some of the features available to conduct business meetings using your business instant messenger are: voice chat, video chat, file transfer, co-browse, whiteboard, screenshot, screen sharing, and voice conference.

In addition to reducing travel costs, features like video chat, file transfer, and co-browse make collaboration between distant branches or employees working from home quick and easy. Allowing employees the option to work from home offers further savings by eliminating the overhead costs involved with employee office space.

The co-browse feature allows the participants to share the view and browse web pages together. Any participant can control the page and guide the conversation. Whiteboard allows multiple users to design and brainstorm with tools like painting, color pallets, and text captions to visual ideas. With the addition of instant message texting, voice chat, or video chat, you and your business associates can hold and attend meetings without leaving the comfort and convenience of your desk.

This ability to increase communication between departments, locations, and business partners/clients gives your business added opportunity for growth and development with minimal cost added to your bottom line. Here are more suggested uses for business instant messenger as the new business meeting.

• Pre-presentation planning sessions – instead of arriving several days early and incurring additional hotel costs for the sake of planning sessions, utilize the Brosix instant messenger tools to plan and brainstorm your presentation without leaving the office
• Save potential clients and customers money by making use of voice chat or video chat thus lowering long distance calling
• When clients or co-workers have a question, quickly answer it using the co-browse or screen sharing tool
• Transfer files as you converse using the text messaging feature
• Never fear the confidentiality of your conversations and information sharing thanks to Brosix security measures

More firms are leaning on their employees to get lean, mean, and efficient. One of the best ways to empower employees is to enable communication to flow freely through the organization. Business instant messaging has quickly become a primary communication tool in companies of all sizes.

But business instant messaging has its own risks: security and even productivity are threatened when a public instant messaging client is used, such as MSN or AOL. So a business instant messaging client is used instead – one that includes robust security and the ability to control with whom employees are chatting.

But not all business instant messaging clients have the same feature sets. Which ones form the core tools your employees need? Some of these im clients only offer chatting, but what about other important features?

Chatting – of course
Sure, you should make sure that your business instant messaging client has chat features. Also make sure emoticons and basic emphasis tools like bold, underline, and italics are included. These embellishments help employees communicate subtle – and not so subtle – emotions that may not always be clearly made through plain text alone.

Screen shot
The screen shot tool is quickly becoming incredibly important for support purposes. Instead of calling support staff, employees can just use the screen shot tool to send a snap shot of the problem.

Co-browsing
Another key feature is the co-browsing feature which allows employees to show each other information that is accessible through a web-browser. Since many people use different browsers – Firefox, Chrome, Opera, and IE – a co-browsing tool will make sure everybody sees the same thing.

Video and audio chat
Finally, the ability to chat by video or audio is becoming important as well. Not many companies take advantage of this feature – yet. More firms are utilizing webcams so employees can chat face-to-face; often from across the world!

Conclusion
Give employees all the tools they need. Business instant messaging goes beyond plain text. Make sure emoticons and other basic emphasis tools are available. Screen shot and co-browsing are two other features that should be available to help in times of need. Finally, video and audio chat are becoming increasingly important, so make sure your im client contains these as well.

With more and more companies using a private business instant messaging client like Brosix it’s easy to have more conversations through the IM client. The problem is that not all conversations should be had through this medium. So here are a few situations where business instant messaging may not be the right tool.

Documentation
Ever had someone commit to a deadline and you were so glad you had that email to hold them to it? Imagine if you had that conversation on your IM client and you had no way to prove the commitment. The fact is that within a company there are many mini-contracts made. If you need to document a response, make sure you have an email or signed document. Instant messaging would not be the tool of choice. Brosix does offer the ability for all conversations to be backed up, but only a system administrator will have access to these files.

Tone is escalating
Even with emoticons and carefully selected words, sometimes people get upset. If you suspect that the person on the other end is getting frustrated it’s probably time to send an email, pick up the phone, or drop by their office. Business instant messaging is for quick messages and communication. When the tone heads south it’s time to use a different method of communication.

Lots of data
We’ve all had an IM conversation where the other person was sending message after message – you couldn’t even keep up because the lines kept moving! When you have a great deal of information to pass along you should use email or physical documents. This also gives the other person the ability to easily organize and store your information without having to copy and paste it out.

Conclusion
Business instant messaging is an excellent tool in many situations, but occasionally it’s simply not the best tool for the job. Make sure you are using the best tool for your situation. If you need to document a response, the conversation’s tone is escalating, or you have lots of data to pass along; consider other forms of communication like email, phone, physical documents, or even dropping by their office.

When companies first look at taking on a business IM the most pressing concern is keeping that business IM about business. While almost no system is 100% fool proof, there is a lot that a company can do to keep their business IM from becoming a party zone.

Host it Yourself

If you host the IM on your own network you can control who your users have access to. This means you can keep them separate from their outside of work friends and family. If the only options for communication are professional then the topic is less likely to turn to personal matters.

Limit Access to Features

Does your secretary really need to be able to co-browse? Probably not. The same probably goes for the whiteboard or video calls features. You can save space, and a lot of trouble if your workers aren’t having video chat about their new diets.

Let Them Know About Monitoring

When you have a system on your own network you can reserve the right to randomly sample the conversations. Even if you never sample, your staff will know that they are being watched. That would lead to more business and less pleasure.

“The Little Engine That Could” was one of my favorite books as a child, since then I have become a huge fan of rebellious efforts – whether upstart football leagues, new companies, independent movies… they all capture my interest. Brosix fits the mold – an upstart company taking on the major players in the enterprise messaging world… and winning.

Brosix offers better and more varied features than many of the efforts in the enterprise world that have bigger budgets and thousands on staff. Brosix offers enterprise messaging in an affordable package but most importantly it is becoming more and more evident that Brosix offers the best IM client that you could buy.

We have illustrated the features that we believe make us the best enterprise messaging client for your company and that news was validated by our success in the About.com Best IM Client contest. Brosix won “Developers of the Year” and “Best IM’ing Feature” for Whiteboard, we also placed very strongly in the other three categories in which we were nominated.

Brosix is quietly illustrating that we are the “little engine that could” in the enterprise messaging category which is exciting to see develop as someone who believes in upstart ventures. The history of technology is defined by companies beginning in garages, closets, and spare bedrooms and then altering the world – at least the tech world.

Brosix is slowly but surely rewriting the rules of enterprise messaging and building a program that should be the best IM client for you and your company!

Office productivity and communication are intimately intertwined. Your IM client should give your staff all the tools they need to communicate quickly and effortlessly. Besides chat, your IM client should include file sharing, screen sharing, video chat, and voice chat for starters. Other important features are whiteboards and screenshot tools.

For example…

Document production and proofing is a common task. Whether you have an RFP that needs approval, a company newsletter to be proofread, or just some fresh ideas, document sharing through the IM client can make this process painless and lightning fast.

Why not just use email? Email clients have their own issues when it comes to file sharing, but the other fact of the matter is that email can be far from instant. The local client may only send files every 5, 10, or even every 30 minutes. That means it could take hours or days for a document to circulate. Your IM client can expedite this process and improve the quality of communication in the process.

And when there are important questions, even when they are as obvious as the comical conversation above, your staff have immediate access to the right people.

Is there such a thing as a secure IM client for businesses? The short answer is, “Yes!” The long answer is, “It depends.” Since a standard feature of your IM client is likely a file share tool, you automatically have serious problems. Anybody can send anyone any file on their computer. What’s the solution? Do you just cut the file sharing feature out?

The secret: enterprise instant messaging

Do you really want your employees or staff to be able to send any file on your servers to their friends? If they have a generic IM client running, any file on your server has direct access to the rest of the world. The best way to secure your files is to control which IM client your employees and staff are using.

That’s why you need enterprise instant messaging. What do all these fancy words really mean? If your staff all only have a unique IM client – one that their buddies don’t have – then they can only share files with their fellow employees. As long as you keep the generic IM client off your computers, your files and information are MUCH more secure. You also get the added benefit of all the productivity of instant messaging without all the external friends and family.

You do have more complicated, aggressive, and expensive options for security, but this little secret makes it simple. When you control which IM client your staff uses you automatically cut out all the external users who might be given access to your valuable data.

First thing’s first: not every IM client is created equally. If you’re a casual instant message user, then all you need are the basic features like chat (of course) and maybe video and voice chat when you are feeling a bit on the wilder side. You should look for an IM client that all your buddies have and stick with what works.

What about power instant message users found in most businesses? You know the type – always chatting, sharing documents, keeping the office running kind of folks. If you’re working with sensitive documents and need a more robust set of tools, not just any IM client will do.

Important business features

Here are just a few features you should be looking for in an IM client if you intend to get serious about instant messaging:

Video and voice chat – more customers, clients, and co-workers have a webcam or microphone than you might think. Even if they don’t have their own setup, you can still look them in the eye while they ask you questions via chat.

Screen sharing – it’s ALWAYS better to show than to tell. Make sure your IM client allows you to share your screen with someone so you can walk them through a presentation or just show them how to complete a task.

Screenshot – while less robust than screen sharing, this is still a fast and powerful way to quickly show people rather than just explain.

File transfer – this lets you send documents and files quickly to the right person at the right time.

Of course, you may need more tools, but these are the bare minimum. Remember, your IM client of choice will likely become a serious office productivity tool. Better choose right the first time than have to get everybody set up with a new client later.