Sametime is not a "one size fits all" offering. You have the power to decide what level of Sametime you would like to license and install based on the feature level that makes sense for your organization. There are four levels of Sametime available: Entry, Standard, Advanced, and Unified Telephony. Each subsequent level adds features to the previous level and determines what options you will have at your disposal.

Sametime Entry: Sametime Entry is the "get your feet wet" version of Sametime. As its name suggests, it provides a basic set of options which include: instant messaging, online awareness, geographic information, screen capture, and Microsoft product integration.

Sametime Standard: Sametime Standard takes instant messaging to the next level by building on the Sametime Entry features to include: file transfers, screen captures, alerts, voice and video chats, web conferencing with video and/or audio as well as screen sharing and chat over VoIP networks; integration with public IM systems such as AOL and Google through the Sametime Gateway system. Some integrated telephony voice options are available with third-party vendor support such as "click to call" and call management. Users can communicate with their Sametime contacts with mobile devices such as Blackberries, iPhones, iPads, Android, and Windows Mobile phones.

Sametime Advanced: Sametime Advanced adds the additional functionality of social networking features in your instant messaging client. Sametime Advanced offers a persistent chat room service, broadcast chat messages, the ability to set up instant surveys, screen sharing, and remote machine control all from within the Sametime client. In addition, in many ways the social networking features of Sametime Advanced act as a real-time complement to those of IBM Connections. Sametime Advanced provides the ability to build communities people can subscribe to, enabling them to share their knowledge amongst a group of like users and send out questions and discussions to those community users in real time.

Sametime Unified Telephony: Sametime Unified Telephony adds "unified communication" functionality. Many organizations are seeking to integrate chat, email, and office applications, with what has typically been only phone-based functionality such as voice mail, call routing, and caller presence. Sametime Unified Telephony adds those features to the Sametime product set.

A more complete list of available options for each Sametime offering can be found at http://www.ibm.com/software/lotus/products/sametime/versioncompare/.

Sametime also has the ability to connect with external instant messaging communities through the Sametime Gateway. The Sametime Gateway is an additional server that communicates between your Sametime environment and other messaging environments such as AOL Instant Messenger, Google Talk, and other communities that use the XMPP protocol.

For more information on Sametime Gateway, please review http://publib.boulder.ibm.com/infocenter/sametime/v8r5/index.jsp?topic=/com.ibm.help.sametime.v85.doc/overview/over_server_gw.html.