Instant Messaging is here

Like it or not, Instant Messaging (IM) is crossing over into the business mainstream. Researcher IDC predicts that corporate staff will make up half of the 56 million IM users expected by 2006.

But there are challenges beyond the well-documented security risks.

Bringing instant messaging into the workplace can be tricky. Because the technology started among consumers, it has had little supervision from IT departments and not much use as a business tool.

So there are things you need to know about IM as they bring it into your world.

Give your employees what they want
Taking away consumer IM tools doesn't make for happy and productive workers. That's because there's no standard for integration, so different vendors' IM tools can't communicate with each other.

If a company gives employees access only to Lotus Sametime, but they've been using Yahoo! Messenger, they'll suddenly be cut off from the people they've been messaging most.

Old habits die hard
Few employees are ready to trade in email for IM.

Sure, today's 20-somethings will help establish IM as the predominant business messaging tool sometime in the future, but in the meantime, it's a safer bet for companies to hitch their communications strategy to email.

Staff will still fall back on email for the foreseeable future.

Destination? Integration
IM users dream of a day, destined to arrive soon, when email and IM are available in the same view.

Not only will that make communication easier to manage, but it will ease the burden on IT, which won't have to manage separate messaging infrastructures.

"Traditionally, synchronous and asynchronous have been treated separately, but increasingly you're seeing them coming together," says Patrick Dorsey, group manager of Sun One communication products at Sun Microsystems, which recently spun off the IM server that had been a component of the vendor's portal server.

"Customers are telling us that they want to manage them as a single unit."

Patience pays off
Accepted IM etiquette still hasn't been established, and that can create frustrating inefficiencies.

One of the big advantages of IM is also one of its biggest drawbacks: immediacy.

When an IM exchange degenerates into half-thoughts confusingly passing back and forth in cyberspace, the resulting dialogue is tougher to follow than a Fellini film.

Email continues to provide clearer communication much of the time, largely because its asynchronous nature lets users complete thoughts without being interrupted. Make sure users know that they should do the same in real time.

There is one fact that must be faced: whatever the challenges IM will continue its march towards becoming a widely accepted information medium.

Financial information giant Dow Jones, for example, is experimenting with the technology as an emerging channel for delivering premium subscription content.

Dow Jones Newswires says it will soon begin distributing wire services through Communicator's Hub IM, a private network that caters to Wall Street's buy-side fixed-income securities market.

Fixed-income traders and their clients will be able to view real-time information ranging from general business news and capital markets updates to foreign exchange reports and corporate filings, all from within their Hub IM window.

The real-time scrolling ticker will be available to Hub IM users who are subscribers, in much the same way as information is supplied to subscribers via other financial services desktop tools, including products from Reuters and Bloomberg, says Joe Laurenzano, Dow Jones Newswires' director of partners and alliances.

The service will also let subscribers participate in real-time forums with Dow Jones experts, and could provide a channel for conducting instant news polls.

But Laurenzano says how far Dow Jones goes in distributing over IM networks will depend on how many IM services offer access to professional communities that are logical audiences for the company's content.

Getting the most from IM

• Send complete thoughts. No one wants to hear that alert sound seven times because you're so desperate not to be interrupted that you send sentences in pieces. On the other hand ...

• Don't interrupt. If it's clear your correspondent is still completing a thought, resist the temptation to jump in It's frustrating for everyone when conversations break into disjointed questions and answers

• Use the automated 'away' message when you won't be responding to IMs. People won't feel ignored

• Limit the use of 'have a nice day'-style emoticons. Waitresses and waiters use them to elicit bigger tips. On the internet, no one can tip, so why bother?

(C) 2003 CMP Media LLC

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