Avnet Hall-Mark Brings IM To Partners

nstant messaging, the killer application for the world's teenagers, has burst through the corporate firewall. The technology, which enables realtime, on-screen chat sessions, is becoming an essential tool for solution providers that want to be in close contact with suppliers and customers.

The ability to answer questions quickly,without having to engage in phone and e-mail "tag",is especially critical for solution providers that deal with many small businesses. Tempe, Ariz.-based distributor Avnet Hall-Mark saw this trend early and beta-tested instant messaging internally before going live with its Avnet IM secure instant messaging service in November.

Based on Lotus Sametime instant messaging technology, Avnet IM is designed to help company personnel communicate faster and better with the resellers they serve and support. Avnet also is hosting the service,part of its Channel Connection portal,for channel partners that request it and even supports reseller employees who don't need to be in constant touch with the distributor. Cathy Serie, vice president of divisional marketing at Avnet, said the new service is a great way for the distributor to stay in touch with its far-flung reseller partners.

"The big business drivers are that we have a geographically dispersed customer base," Serie said. "We have field sales and inside sales, and there's nothing better than instant [communication]. It brings our partners close to us.

Principle Software, a Lotus and IBM partner, has relied on instant messaging internally for two years and has the technology to connect with IBM, Avnet and customers, said Jim Murphy, managing director at the Cambridge, Mass.-based integrator, which specializes in serving SMB clients.

"The key is reduced cycle time. Anything that cuts cycles out of sales is important, especially in the fourth quarter, when everything is rush, rush, rush," Murphy said. "Software sales are increasingly complex, and this really cuts down on voice mail and e-mail."

SMB solution providers say they like the way that instant messaging can help them solve customer issues quickly. "It's absolutely part of our effort to tie our customers in more closely," said Lief Morin, president of Key Information Systems, a Woodland Hills, Calif.-based solution provider that uses Avnet IM.

Some solution providers see instant messaging as a real breakthrough for communication in the channel. "This is as big as e-mail and the fax," said Darren Waldrep, vice president of business development at DataTrend, a Minnetonka, Minn.-based IBM partner that uses Avnet IM.

"It sounds so basic. You see who's there, you can send a quick message even if you're on a conference call,which in the IBM world is all the time,and you can get quick answers to questions on order status and whatnot," Waldrep said. "And Sametime lets you have multiple people in meetings doing whiteboarding. We'll play with that."

Cynthia Mathis, director of business development at Relavis, a New York-based ISV that embeds Sametime with the CRM solutions it sells to SMBs, agreed that instant messaging offers a new dimension of communication. "It's great for getting that quick piece of data or a fast answer to a customer question, or for sending a URL to help people find what they need and copy and paste information," said Mathis.

America Online blazed the instant messaging trail years ago with its AOL Instant Messenger (AIM) and ICQ services, and Yahoo and Microsoft later followed suit with their own offerings. But none of the products endeared themselves to corporate IT departments, which saw instant messaging as a security hole and a drain on network bandwidth because of its file-transfer capabilities.

Lotus, however, has addressed such concerns with Sametime, which works through firewalls and integrates with corporate directories to validate user IDs. Sametime also lets IT administrators shut off file-transfer and other features that would let a user send out sensitive information.

In November, AOL launched Enterprise AIM, an enterprise version of its instant messaging service. Several weeks later, Yahoo and Microsoft unveiled their own corporate instant-messaging offerings, which are due out this year.

AOL charges $34 to $40 per user per year for Enterprise AIM, and Sametime costs $38 per user per year. Microsoft MSN Messenger is slated to cost $24 per user per year and ship when Microsoft launches its Real-Time Collaboration capabilities after the April release of Windows .Net Server. Yahoo Messenger Enterprise Edition 2.0, due out in the first quarter, is expected to cost $30 per user per year. All of the vendors offer volume discounts.