Fast Forwarding your Business with Instant Messaging

Instant Messaging is rapidly becoming accepted in the business
community as a viable communications tool and process - it's
faster than e-mail, free on the client side, even a novice
user can easily grasp the interface in just a few minutes
and it enables remote workers and business partners to "talk"
and share files and information effortlessly using the in-place
infrastructure of the internet. Its mushrooming in popularity
too - according to IDC, corporate and general business users
will jump from 5.5M in 2001 to close to 200M by 2004.

What are some of the pitfalls and concerns you need to have
when assessing and integrating Instant Messaging ("IM" another
biz acronym) with your business processes? Be aware you are
sending clear text messages over the public Internet - so all
IM technology is inherently insecure. Privacy issues can also
be raised - these messages are typically archived via the IM
servers of the company whose services you are using and can be
made public at a later date. Anyone with a network scanner may
have access to and be reading your messages and if your are
downloading files, you need to ensure your anti-virus software
is setup to scan these files when you open them.

One of the biggest pitfalls of the technology and process is
that it adds another communications layer to your busy day -
but you can offset this by selecting or filtering who you
communicate with at any point by using the IM interface to
block all or selected individuals from "seeing" you when you
are online.

Finally, like all things in today's computer industry (or
many) each of the Instant Messaging vendors are trying to
build applications which don't integrate with the other
(no surprise here - arrogance has not faded away in the
business community!). So, you need to assess the installed
base of the market leaders and make a decision on which
company's product you want to utilized - my recommendation
would be to review Microsoft's or AOL/Time Warner's products
- their installed bases are in the 200 million users plus
when combined (these numbers include consumer and business
usage) and they both work well and have user interfaces that
are intuitive.

There is one alternative company that is solving the "IM
Tower of Babel" issues and claims to integrate well with
all proprietary apps by utilizing XML technology, Jabber,
Inc., www.jabber.com So, if interoptability is important
to you then I would recommend assessing their products.

Most of the IM providers including Microsoft are integrating
voice communications with their IM clients - you may be able
to bypass your local telephone carrier at some point using
this technology, but don't bet on it anytime soon - all of
those lobbyists here in the states need to keep generating
fees on behalf of their telecom clients in Washington D.C.
We use Microsoft's IM product and we have upon occasion
utilized the voice and video features (you must of course
have a multimedia setup for your PC and camera) and they
do work. Although the video quality is a little jerky and
the voice is akin to the old Citizens Band ("CB") radio -
your Internet connection impacts the quality of both.

Whose technology do you choose? There are some clear market
leaders in the Instant Messaging marketing including Microsoft
(no surprise here) http://messenger.microsoft.com But, like
most Microsoft technology ools you pay a price for the
software/services, albeit a small one. You have to register with
Microsoft's NET Passport www.microsoft.com/myservices/passport
service which is designed to be a universal login - this only
takes a few minutes but be forewarned they also try to get you
to setup a Hot Mail account, but you can work around this.

The other dominant IM product is AOL's ICQ product
http://web.icq.com - it has similar functionality as
Microsoft's application. A great Israeli company, Mirabellis,
Inc., subsequently acquired by AOL, developed the original
technology. My chief complaint with this product is the
irritating banner ads that AOL keeps pushing at you when you
are utilizing their product. But, it's a small price to pay
for a free product on the client side.

Yahoo also has an IM product ("Yahoo Messenger") but I am not
convinced this will stay as a core part of their business, as
they appear to be still trying to figure out what they are
going to become in the post ".com gold rush era" market; i.e.
Portal, Directory, Media giant, software/services company, etc.
And, they've certainly jettisoned parts of their business the
last 12-18 months and I would wager they've had discussions
about getting out of the IM business.

Finally, IM is also quickly moving into other markets and
devices including PDAs and Pagers - if you're a real geek
and you can't stand to be out of touch while your in the
shower and you have a water proof device you can ping away.
But, I think we all need some down time for friends and family,
but wanted to make sure I covered all possible bases with this
column - until next time!