We have just completed our most recent semi-annual tracking survey of instant messaging in the enterprise - and for the first time, more than half of organizations are using IM for business applications and another 9% are planning to do so.

Here’s more of what we found:

* The percentage of organizations that currently use IM for business purposes is up slightly from our last survey and demonstrates the growing acceptance of and comfort with IM in business settings.

* We saw a significant jump in the percentage of organizations that view IM as enabling a major improvement for some business processes. For example, 72% of respondents said IM has improved or would improve communication with remote employees, up from 60% in the September 2004 survey. In the just-completed survey, 58% of respondents said IM would be useful for reducing e-mail traffic, up from 41% in the previous survey. IM, like many technologies, tends to be viewed more favorably the longer it’s in use, as more users find ways to employ it that they previously had not considered.

* IT support for IM is growing: 48% of IT departments now support IM, up from 37% in the previous survey. This is one of the more significant findings, since IT support for IM - including deployment of enterprise-grade products - will be critical in expanding the use of IM beyond just simple chat and toward enterprise applications for presence.

* The most recent survey confirms that the Big Three in the consumer market - AOL Instant Messenger, Microsoft MSN Messenger and Yahoo Messenger - are also the Big Three in the enterprise, used by more than half of organizations. The leading enterprise-grade IM product continues to be Lotus Instant Messaging (SameTime), although Microsoft Live Communication Server has doubled its penetration since the previous survey.

Highlights of this survey are available at:
http://www.ostermanresearch.com/results/orresults_2005-03.pdf

Michael Osterman is principal analyst of Osterman Research.