Mac OS X Server

iChat Server brings the collaborative power of instant messaging to your organization. Now your workgroups can choose any number of ways to communicate among themselves or with others outside the group. They can transfer files securely, share a persistent chat room, conduct an audio conference, or — with the new iChat Theater feature in Mac OS X Leopard — even broadcast a presentation, movie, or photo slideshow to other iChat users.

Your own private IM server.

iChat Server provides secure instant messaging for users on the network and can integrate with your organization’s directory service for user account information. The directory also handles authentication, ensuring that whoever is logging in under an iChat name is really that person. And since all text messages and file transfers are encrypted, information sent through your server is kept secure and confidential.

Industry-standard.

iChat Server is based on Jabber, the industry-standard IM protocol also known as XMPP. This enables support for Mac computers using iChat, as well as for other Jabber clients running on Windows and Linux systems, PDAs, and even cell phones.

Persistent chat rooms.

With iChat in Mac OS X Leopard, users can request iChat Server to create and host a persistent chat room. Perfect for virtual team scenarios, project-specific discussions, and real-time blow-by-blow updates, the chat room allows individuals to join at any time, leave when they need to — even log out and shut down — and come back to review all communications since the chat room opened.

Store and forward.

Thanks to new store-and-forward functionality in iChat Server, users can send messages to people who are offline, combining the advantages of IM with the advantages of email.

Federation.

iChat Server federates with other iChat Server systems and XMPP-compliant systems, such as Google Talk, using the server-to-server capabilities of the XMPP protocol. This allows users on iChat Server to exchange secure IMs with users on another network as long as both servers are accessible via the Internet. These server-to-server communication sessions can be encrypted using SSL/TLS with public key certificates, and you can configure iChat Server to block communication with servers that don’t support encryption.