Instant messaging is no longer solely the realm of teenagers and lonely insomniacs. While you might not want to plunk down MSN Messenger on your employees’ desktops, instant messaging has a lot to offer business.
Because it’s so popular with home users, instant messaging is easy to introduce into the corporate world. Many businesses use instant messaging, whether as office policy or simply through convenience. It’s quicker than email and more private than chat rooms. Plus anyone can use it, from businesses on WANs to home users on AOL dialup connections.
While it is extremely beneficial to business in many ways, using instant messaging in a corporate setting is quite different from simply saying “hi” to a relative in another state. In business, instant messaging can turn into a curse as easily as it can be a blessing. Network security holes, undependable service, buggy software, even time-wasting employees can cancel out any savings gained through instant messaging if the system is not selected and maintained with great care.
Benefits of IM to Business
Many companies have diverse workforces – sometimes spread between multiple sites and even continents – and instant messaging provides an inexpensive real-time communication technique. It’s less expensive than long distance telephone calls, and conferencing via instant messaging, or IM as it’s often abbreviated, allows groups of employees to discuss topics without anyone getting on a plane or booking a hotel reservation.
Not only is it cheaper to conference with remote workers, it’s quicker to ask questions via IM than to call someone or walk to an office for a simple answer. Additionally, files, URLs, images, and sounds can be transferred via instant messaging. Some IM software also supports voice communication, allowing people to actually speak with one another – completely independent of telephones. Factor in IM support for PDAs and cell phones and you can see that IM allows connectivity between people in any combination of locations imaginable.
In fact, it’s so popular that instant messaging at work increased 110% between September 2000 and September 2001 (see below). After terrorist attacks and subsequent reduced corporate travel, you can be certain the numbers have increased well beyond this figure.
Drawbacks
There are some drawbacks to using instant messaging in business. Like email, it quickly ceases to be a luxury and rapidly becomes a necessity. Also like email, the advantages of free services have their limits, and having a dependable system often is more important than having a cheap one.
Dependence on MSN for MSN Messenger, or upon AOL for AIM can put your company at the mercy of some fairly unstable systems. Last fall, changes at MSN left users without buddy lists or the ability to message for a few days. Just recently MSN went down again (see below), leaving users without the ability to use the messaging system. This time it was over a weekend, but it is nonetheless disturbing to have a critical communication system at the mercy of another company.
Instant messaging software is also free, which is good and bad. Buggy software can put your company at the mercy of clever hackers on the Internet, and there’s really no one to complain to about flaws. Recently a serious security flaw was discovered in MSN Messenger…(see below).
Spam is beginning to become a problem on some free services. Even the popular ICQ service often broadcasts unwanted anonymous announcements for porn sites and other unwanted solicitations.
Security is another problem. Most free instant messaging software does not encrypt communications between users. So, if a competitor or a hacker decides to try to steal information from your company, an insecure messaging system makes it that much simpler.
Finally, administrative woes plague free messaging software. Question: who administers the software? Answer: the users do. While such freedom may encourage employees to use the system, it also lends itself to abuse. It’s difficult to figure out what’s going on with systems that are totally outside your company’s control. Do you want your employees playing cards over IM during business hours? Probably not, but if you use a free service, it’s hard to tell what they’re doing with it.
Solutions
Instant messaging is a terrific idea, there’s no denying it. However, its execution needs to be better at the corporate level than what a home user would expect. Downtimes cannot linger on indefinitely; communications must be secure; control over the system must lie in the hands of the company.
Fortunately, there are many commercial solutions to the instant messaging dilemma. The following are a few examples of IM for business. Many more companies offer similar services; these examples should give you a general idea of what types of features you can expect. As with any investment in business, carefully research any software solution before you purchase it.
One of these systems is called Business Messenger and it’s offered by Imici (see below). Not only does it offer administrator-level control but it’s also compatible with AIM, ICQ, Yahoo!, and MSN instant messaging services. This allows users on a private, encrypted IM network to communicate with others outside the network. Administrators can keep track of things like what files have been transferred, so there is some control over what happens on the network. Imici has a variety of plans, with services you can either host yourself or host through Imici.
If security is your primary instant messaging concern, then you’ll find one possible solution in the new joint effort between Verisign and AOL. Beta testing for the new encrypted messaging offering will begin later in May. The new service, called Enterprise AIM, will encode messages sent across AOL.
Boomerang Software (see below) offers encryption options that not only encrypt your instant messages but your email as well, including attachments, for a variety of email programs. It adds filtering capabilities to the IM mix, allowing administrators to eliminate undesirable communications. Logging also allows administrators to see exactly what’s traveling over the network. Boomerang offers many features for companies that hope to keep their networks safe, secure, and controlled.
An extremely popular instant messaging package, rated above any other commercial product and close behind free IM services, is Lotus Sametime from IBM. Sametime is a powerful network tool that extends far beyond simple instant messaging services, incorporating other features like videoconferencing and whiteboards for full-blown teleconferencing. It’s rated as an easy to use system and also offers advanced features like document collaboration tools.
Jackie Rosenberger is an editor with murdok
