Real-time collaboration gets real

Until recently, more than 2,000 employees at SAS, the world's largest privately held software company, were using a hodgepodge of consumer instant-messaging tools that lacked enterprise-level security and robust functionality.

The Cary, N.C., company rectified that situation by deploying Microsoft Live Communication Server and Microsoft Office Communicator 2005 clients. Today, more than 3,000 of SAS's 10,000 employees are using the system, which integrates with various applications so co-workers can collaborate from a spreadsheet, a document or line-of-business system, such as CRM.

Live Communication Server also integrates with videoconferencing, Web conferencing, phone systems, e-mail, calendar, directory programs and public IM systems to create a presence-enable work environment that's as close to real-time as you can get.

The impact on the business has been dramatic: "It used to be that something would sit on somebody's desk for weeks. It just doesn't happen any more. They move on. They don't sit on decisions," says Suzanne Gordon, CIO of SAS. "People know that if they don't act, the world's going to move on without them."

Click to see: SAS CIO Suzanne Gordon

While SAS initially adopted an enterprise instant-messaging application to make IM more secure, the presence aspect of the application is having a major impact on the way the enterprise collaborates, communicates and operates.

"Presence awareness was sort of the icing on the cake that turned out to be one of the killer applications," says Kevin Angley, who manages the messaging and directory resources group for SAS's IT organization.

SAS is now "federating" or connecting its real-time collaboration system with those of its business partners and implementing public IM connectivity to link up with partners that lack an enterprise IM system. "Public IM is secure within our borders to their access to the proxy server within their network," Angley says.