Enterprise IM-ing: once a neat pop-up window for casual conversation, now a powerful networking tool speculated to revolutionize company productivity.

Instant Messaging. Or how the kids like to call it these days--"IM-ing." There was a time when the technology seemed to cater to a specific segment of the population that consisted mostly of tech-friendly teens who could use the technology to secretly exchange private messages amongst each other. But things have changed. IM is all grown up and is popping up in enterprises all across the country with a myriad of applications--presence being the most promising one of all.

Vladimir Butenko, CEO of Stalker Software, places IM technology in the same category as live telephone conferencing. In his words, IM provides a medium for when the freedom to wait 15 seconds for an answer is just not an option. In a case like this, you could use e-mail but it will not get you the same kind of immediate response. "With e-mail communication, users exchange memos not phrases," said Butenko.

Research firm IDC predicts that after a cooling period in 2002-2003, the worldwide messaging applications market revenue is expected to more than double to nearly $2.4 billion by 2007. There are currently more than 100 million users of IM worldwide, and the Gartner Group predicts that by 2006, IM will be used more often than e-mail as the preferred method of messaging in the enterprise.

According to Dmitry Shapiro, CTO of Akonix, a software manufacturing company that manages IM usage, the trend is on the rise for a reason. "While in the past IM was seen as something that should be stopped or only offered to limited groups of users, in 2004 more and more organizations will be allowing their employees to gain the benefits of IM, while eliminating the risks that unmanaged use presents," he said.

Uses of IM

IM is a multi-faceted gadget. Some use it to communicate amongst company employees (more efficiently than via e-mail and phone) while others have set up the necessary protocols to communicate with partner companies, customers and external contacts. According to a statement released by IBM Instant Technologies president and founder Peyton McManus, IM provides a means to compress time. "Take an e-mail thread which may cycle three to five days towards completion," he explains. "If you can empower the participants in that e-mail discussion with instant messaging, they can make decisions in real time, and perhaps shorten that thread from five days to five minutes."

Employees find IM eliminates the oft-times irritating practice of playing phone tag, while companies find the practice beneficial because it offloads traffic from corporate e-mail and phone systems. Yet, the most promising application to date for IM appears to be its use as a form of presence technology.

Presence

Presence technology is a type of application that makes it possible to locate and identify a computing device (including, for example, handheld computers as well as desktop models) wherever it might be, as soon as the user connects to the network. IM is just one example of this popular technology which is expected to be an integral part of third generation (3G) wireless networks, and is likely to be employed across a wide variety of communication devices, including cell phones, PDAs (personal digital assistants), television sets, and pagers.

According to a paper provided to us by WiredRed, a real-time communications technology software provider, presence can serve many functions. The main function is to communicate online presence, such as with the use of a buddy list. These lists are widely used in personal settings to alert friends and family of online presence. In a business environment, a more effective and efficient way to manage presence is by organizing groups and identities to represent the members of your organization. A number of applications such as WiredRed's e/Pop and Linqware's Collabrix offer these capabilities. In the case of WiredRed, the grouping mechanism of e/Pop uses a hybrid hierarchical tree organizational structure that allows the corporation to organize users under multiple tree objects at any level. This makes it possible to organize users by location and department. Users can also appear under various objects at different positions in the directory tree making organizational grouping virtually unlimited.

For some, the mere indication of online availability is not enough, so IM management products give them the possibility to indicate their availability on other devices as well. Devices such as PDAs, cell phones and Blackberrys. It can also provide the function of screening those that you do want to be available for from those you don't. All the while indicating whether you are busy eating lunch, in a meeting or getting drilled by the company boss. Stephen Seavecki, product marketing manager of VIACK Corporation, says his VIA3 software has six status signals: In a meeting, appear offline, offline, do not disturb, available, and away.

Just like with any new technology, the issue of standards needs to be addressed. According to Butenko, that standard is SIP (Session Initiation Protocol). "SIP is the current mainstream standard for all 'live' communications, including IM," he said. "There is a different emerging standard, 'jabber', but it appears as though it is 'too little, too late.'" By that, Butenko means that, unlike SIP, Jabber is an IM-only protocol. SIP is universal for all types of "live" communications--audio and video, conferencing, call centers, white-boards, application sharing, etc. Another factor that weighs in favor of SIP is the brawn of veteran players such as Cisco, Erikson, Nokia, and other telecom equipment manufacturers that invest heavily into SIP. And according to Butenko this is also why the champs Microsoft and Apple have both released their own SIP-capable products (Microsoft's Windows Messenger and Live Communication Server and Apple's iChat AV).

The Future of IM

According to Michael Jones, CEO of Userplane, one of the pioneers of IM technology, the future is looking bright. In 2004, Jones expects to see much more functionality developed within the use of Presence Detection and IM, where user-to-computer or user-to-system requests can be made and executed within the IM environment. "Using IM as a quick interface to basic computer system functions can reduce overall administration time, and expedite access to business and personal data," he said.

Jones expressed his concern that many companies are currently not taking full advantage of instant messaging because of their common embrace of a public IM network. "Operating within a public IM network, it is far more difficult to create custom functions, application interfaces and truly controlled customer-to-professional communication than when using a private IM client," said Jones.

But what are the real hurdles that need to be overcome to ensure a victory lap for IM in the coming years? According to Butenko the main problem is the existence of old proprietary systems. The survival of these systems will depend on how quickly they can switch to the standards-based system, just as the survival of proprietary e-mail systems depended on how quickly they could switch to the standards-based e-mail. "Those who succeeded, at least to some degree--like AOL--are still around, those who were late are forgotten," said Butenko.

This is just the tip of the iceberg according to Jones, who says that aside from the general interoperability and standards obstacles, there are a slew of security concerns and user concerns on instant messaging inside of corporate environments. "Many IT departments have tried to ignore the existence of IM, hoping that its use is just a trend," said Jones. "But now that IM is becoming an important client communication tool, those IT departments need to determine positioning on the use of IM within their organizations."

Has IM already seen its glory days, or is it on its way to becoming the new enterprise pet? You be the judge. One thing's for sure, IM is steadily becoming a force to be reckoned with. With many companies having already reaped the benefits of implementing the technology, in 2004 the time has come for all companies to evaluate their need for the medium in order to remain competitive in the marketplace.