Instant messaging was never invited to the communications party in the enterprise – it crashed the party, and now IT managers must find a way to control IM before the dining room table gets smashed.
Radicati Group recently estimated that IM is being used in 85% of all companies worldwide. The total number of unsecured public IM service users (the AOLs, Yahoos and MSN Messengers of the world) in the workplace are expected to exceed 125 million by mid-2004, up from 100 million users nine months ago, and five times the number of users from 2002.
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The meteoric rise of public IM users is a direct result of the strong perceived benefits on the part of IM users. Finding the status of a co-worker or friend via a persistent Internet or intranet connection, being able to send a short text message in real time to anyone “alive” on the server, and the lack of friction many users face when installing and adopting the public IM service all contribute to IM’s success. Technology built into Windows XP (Windows Messenger) does not require technical support or training. If an employee’s operating system does not already include the Messenger client (or another service is desired), those with Internet access and the knowledge of installing an application on a PC are minutes away from being up and running.
But the risks of leaving IM unmanaged in corporations are well documented. According to a Radicati study, threats to enterprise security (including viruses and worms introduced via IM), the need to comply with industry or federal regulations, and concerns about the inappropriate release of confidential data (see “Top 5 IM security risks”) will cause nearly 20% of all IT managers to take steps to block employees from using public IM services when they are registered with the enterprise identity management infrastructure.
Yet completely shutting down public IM usage likely will elicit phone calls from avid users within hours, if not minutes. Many highly productive employees rely on their buddy lists to accelerate workflow and manage mission-critical processes. When their lifeline to partners and team members worldwide gets closed down, they frequently don’t want to return to old communications and messaging technologies, such as the telephone, fax and e-mail.
In a Meta Group research report titled “Justifying instant messaging investments,” Matt Cain writes that IT managers lobbying management for either an enterprise IM platform, or IM monitoring and management systems that can enforce public policies around public IM (see Clear Choice Test) should develop their case on as many as eight points (see “Eight benefits of IM”).
Reduce e-mail and phone tag
Two key points that can help justify an investment in IM are the telephone infrastructure displacement and the reduced growth of e-mail infrastructure.
“Presence information can be used to eliminate telephone tag by enabling users to determine when others are in the office and available,” Cain’s report says. His study estimates more than 60% of business phone calls end up in voice mail. “Pulling together team members for a quick conference call via IM can be far simpler than arranging for a phone conference, and far less expensive if multiple continents are involved,” his report says. According to Meta, IBM saw a 4% reduction in phone expenses because of an increased use of IM. IBM generates up to 3.5 million messages per day from its internal operations, Meta says.
Similarly, IM usage is believed to lighten the load on the e-mail infrastructure at some companies, especially in cases where file transfers over IM avoid passing through the e-mail server. Although the network bandwidth usage remains the same, transferring over IM helps reduce storage and back-up costs on the e-mail server.
The softer side
It is more difficult to quantify the bottom-line benefits of employees having immediate answers to questions (access to experts on demand) and a closer and more collaborative relationship with peers and superiors. By some analyst estimates, the changes to workflow made possible by enterprise IM systems is equal to or more important than the dollar savings, because new workflows can reduce the need for administrative personnel, improve morale among employees who feel more connected to remote teams, and accelerate the speed at which emergencies are addressed.
It might be difficult to defend rigorous ROI calculations for IM investments, in part because the communications needs of employees vary so widely. Employees with external communications responsibilities will need greater support in using public IM services, while employees who communicate primarily with other employees might benefit more from an internally deployed and managed enterprise IM platform.
It’s clear that IM, the unruly and uninvited guest, is a risk to the status quo in enterprise communications. Like it or not, the party crasher is getting stronger and more manageable. By investing moderately in monitoring and management systems that will consistently and openly build and convey usage guidelines, and enforce these policies automatically, IT organizations can more easily focus their attentions on the positive aspects of the new real-time communications party.
