Free instant messaging services invade the enterprise

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By Jon Surmacz

(IDG) -- Even if you're not necessarily buddies with your coworkers, they may find their way onto your buddy list in the near future, according to Stamford, Connecticut-based Gartner Group.

A recent report by Gartner predicts that 70 percent of enterprise employees will be using free instant messaging (IM) services (like those provided by AOL, Yahoo! and MSN for example) for interpersonal communication at the office by 2003. AOL, like CNN.com, is a subsidiary of AOL Time Warner.

Gartner estimates that more than 200 million users worldwide have signed up for IM identities on the free major services, with about a quarter of those users signed up with more than one service. It's this popularity among home users that is driving adoption in the enterprise.

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"Once two or three influential people in an enterprise begin using it, it spreads like wildfire," says Gartner analyst Whit Andrews. "It's more popular than I would have guessed."

IM allows multiple, disparate corporate users to communicate with one another, or customers, by sending text messages in real-time. Andrews says that instant messages are not typically full conversations, but rather short statements or questions that need immediate attention and have some anecdotal productivity value for the enterprise. IM offers the same tradeoffs as the telephone, e-mail and the Web have brought to the workplace. In other words, it provides efficient means of communication, but can also be a distraction.

"Worker productivity will vary depending on the individual, the job role and their work habits," Andrews says. "If someone is not productive, they aren't going to become productive because of this."

But just because employees are embracing free IM services doesn't mean the enterprise should endorse it. Andrews warns that free IM services do not guarantee their availability, nor are they interoperable with one another. IT organizations should also be concerned with security holes in IM services, which travel over the Internet as unencrypted text. Andrews says IT organizations need to decide if such services are exposing their businesses to undue risk. And if so, they must decide if purchasing a commercial IM service will satisfy the needs of employees and provide value to the business.

"It's a classic IT problem," says Andrews. "What is it that our business customer requires that is not offered by the enterprise? Is (instant messaging) something that we should offer?"

Framingham, Massachusetts-based IDC (a sister company to CXO Media) predicted last year that the worldwide corporate IM market would grow from 5.5 million users in 2000 to 180 million users by 2004. Gartner predicts that by 2005, 50 percent of enterprises will have moved to a commercial IM service. Andrews says companies that use IM heavily should determine best practices and policies for its use, similar to policies outlined for e-mail use. The first step should be to determine how many employees are using IM, and why.