IM Intrigues the Enterprise

But uncontrolled exchanges of information pose security risks. The Yankee Group estimates that a majority of the current 25 million U.S. business IM users operate on public network systems without IT department approval or knowledge. Such unmanaged use has several harmful side effects: IM-delivered viruses, lack of communication audit trails and unchecked dissemination of proprietary company information.

Now, companies in various industries are scrambling to implement enterprise solutions to manage this grassroots evolution. Such efforts have helped to put forecasts for this market at a compound annual growth rate of approximately 150 percent for the next three years, according to The Yankee Group. Ferris Research values the current business IM market at $130 million in revenue for vendors, and predicts the total will increase to $794 million by 2007.

"Instant messaging is very much part of the way business is being done now," says Tony D'Agostino, COO at Wachovia Securities, which had instant-messaging provider FaceTime install its IM Auditor Enterprise management solution so its compliance officers wouldn't have to review printouts of every IM session its brokers conducted with clients. "If you don't get the technology, you won't get the business."

That also applies to solution providers: The increased demand among businesses to institute enterprise instant-messaging solutions are a revenue opportunity for VARs.

"We are closing deals weekly," says Glen Vondrick, CEO of Foster City, Calif.-based FaceTime, whose solution supports systems from IM vendors such as AOL, IBM Lotus, Microsoft, Reuters and Yahoo. "A couple of years ago, we were closing deals monthly. Now it's just a matter of getting to more places. VARs can bring us coverage."

Beyond Chat
While a majority of companies are trying just to manage the viral adoption of instant messaging among employees, VARs will soon have opportunities to integrate the technology into existing company processes.

"The money will come from the application integration," says Jim Murphy, managing director of Principle Software, a Cambridge, Mass.-based VAR. "Companies see that employees are already using it. While IT budgets are lean, one way companies can score a big win is by customizing a technology that is already in place."

The chat aspect of IM seems to be what's getting the technology through companies' doors. Solution providers can then extend programs into existing business applications.

Take OpenScape, Siemens Information and Communication Networks' product (in beta), which uses Microsoft's Window Server 2003 and its Greenwich instant-messaging platform to provide a communication solution to the growing number of companies working with mobile and offsite employees. OpenScape adds instant messaging and presence capabilities to its communication middleware that integrates phone, Web conferencing, groupware and business applications.

"Instant messaging itself will soon be commoditized," says Mark Straton, senior vice president of global marketing at Siemens. "So how do you use it to get significant value out of it? Add value."

Sharp Microelectronics of the Americas is doing just that. Sales representatives at the company use Lotus SameTime in combination with the telephone to negotiate deals involving more than two parties. The company also uses IM to spontaneously include employees in meetings and share PowerPoint presentations.

Bruce Elgort, manager of information services in the company's Strategic Business Operations Group, adds that Sharp plans to add awareness capabilities to its Web site to alert sales representatives about prospective clients. That presence will prompt the company representative to send the prospective customer a message, offering assistance.

Sharp also plans to integrate IM into the company's inventory system, Elgort says. "When a certain inventory dips below a specified level, an IM function could send an alert to the appropriate employee to restock," Elgort says.

Big Sky Technologies, a San Diego-based solution provider, recently added IM to eWorkOrder, its hosted facility management solution, which gives store and facility managers access to information and personnel they need to run their retail stores. Big Sky is working with its current customers, which include retail-beauty chain Sephora and grocery-store chain Safeway, to deploy this new feature, and anticipates they will be using IM as part of their eWorkOrder systems within the next three months, says Big Sky president Tom Krier.

IM Obstacles
The increase in demand for IM functionality has created a number of vendors that are taking different approaches. Proprietary-hosted IM systems, such as Reuters Messaging and Hub IM, offer a common infrastructure that lends itself to vertical communities. Then there are interoperability solutions offered by IMLogic and FaceTime that connect and manage various IM systems. Finally, IBM Lotus' SameTime and Microsoft's Greenwich are IM server solutions deployed and managed from behind a corporate firewall.

To add to the complexity, vendors' solutions adhere to varying standards. Which one will prevail? Most of the leading players have embraced Session Initiation Protocol (SIP). But that's not a guarantee it will ultimately win.

"Standardization is a huge problem," says Sandra Shih Se, director of product development and management at Reuters. "If you commit to one network, you can't guarantee that you'll be able to talk to everybody else."

Privacy issues are also hindering adoption. How much do users want to reveal about where they are at any given moment? And what are the consequences to a company if it reveals to customers and rivals how and where its employees work?

"A common obstacle to implementing IM in the business market is cultural,the fear of the technology's invasiveness," says Jeremy Dies, offerings manager for IBM Lotus SameTime. "It's important that companies implement effective policies."

Lisa Meyer ([email protected]) is a freelance writer based in Staten Island, N.Y.