* What is a 'legitimate' messaging application?
In one of the surveys we conducted for our new report on messaging security, we asked e-mail systems decision-makers about their thoughts on what constitutes a ‘legitimate’ application in the context of corporate communications.
In one of the surveys we conducted for our new report on messaging security, we asked e-mail systems decision-makers about their thoughts on what constitutes a ‘legitimate’ application in the context of corporate communications.
For example, the vast majority of organizations view applications like Web conferencing to be legitimate tools for business communications, while only about one-half of organizations view consumer instant messaging clients or chat tools to be legitimate for communications in a business context. The majority of decision makers felt that consumer-oriented Webmail, peer-to-peer file sharing tools and Skype are not legitimate tools.
However, when we looked at smaller organizations (up to 2,500 e-mail users) compared to larger organizations, we found some interesting and striking differences. For example, about three times as many smaller organizations view Skype as a legitimate business communications tool as do larger organizations. About twice as many smaller organizations view consumer-oriented Webmail as legitimate in a business context. Interestingly, significantly greater proportion of larger organizations view chat tools as legitimate.
The fact that Skype and consumer Webmail are viewed as legitimate business tools by a much greater proportion of smaller organizations points out a couple of things. First, smaller organizations tend to have fewer and less rigid policies regarding the use of consumer-oriented tools used in the workplace. IT departments in smaller organizations tend to have fewer rules and exercise less control about what users can or cannot install on their machines. Second, and perhaps more importantly, our research has found that the cost of communications and security tends to be much higher on a per-seat basis for smaller organizations.
The result is that smaller organizations often find it necessary to use consumer-oriented tools to satisfy their communications requirements because they simply don’t have the budget to implement enterprise-grade capabilities in response to demands from their users. Hence, the use of very capable, but more vulnerable, consumer-oriented tools to satisfy this demand.
