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As we discussed in Part One of our series on instant messaging (IM), many businesses now use IM as an important element of their communications structure. But while some companies have embraced IM as a key business application, many more have simply let IM become a part of day-to-day business, with its use and implementation going unchecked. This article will look at some of the options available to make sure that IM becomes a communications solution, not a communications problem.

Companies that have allowed IM to be used in their organization, but who now see some of the issues associated with its use, are faced with a difficult choice. They can either take IM away from users, many of whom have come to rely on it as a communications tool, or manage its use. Many, as you might expect, are choosing the latter, and looking for ways to start managing and controlling IM.

Most of the problems stem from the fact that public IM clients and networks do not offer security, monitoring, logging, or any other features commonly associated with corporate IT applications. Like when e-mail emerged into the corporate domain, it has been realized that IM can only be an effective part of the communications structure if its use can be managed. It's a problem identified as one of the major IT challenges facing business today, and one that executives are becoming increasingly aware of, as Jon Sakoda, Director of Products at IMLogic, a company that produces IM management software, explained.

"CIOs know that IM is being used, but they have no idea who is using it or what they are saying on it," Sakoda said. "These same CIOs approve monitoring and control of other forms of communication and realize that IM is no different."

So, we know what the problems are, the question is how to address them. There are basically two ways to bring IM use under control. One is to implement an IM management application, of which there are a number available. The other is to implement your very own IM system. We'll look at IM management systems first.

IM Management Systems

IM management products allow you to control and manage the use of public IM systems within your organization, which means the staff can continue using its existing IM clients, and thus their existing IM networks. It also provides many of the features available with enterprise IM (EIM) solutions at a fraction of the cost.

IM management systems work by acting as a proxy, intercepting all IM traffic — including logons, conversations, and file transfers — and managing that communication. When a user on your network, for example, starts his or her AOL Instant Messenger (AIM) client, the logon request is captured by the IM proxy. The IM proxy then logs on to the AIM server itself and acts as an intermediary between the local client and the remote IM server. By interceding in this way, the IM proxy is able to examine and apply controls to the IM traffic for that user.

Depending on the IM management product being used, these controls includes things such as virus checking, user blocking, and even content filtering. For example, if a user were to mention "Project X" in an IM, the message could be blocked or the user's manager notified of the communication. Additionally, IM proxies have robust reporting and logging systems allowing administrators and managers to review IM conversations. This has many advantages such as ensuring that productivity is not being compromised by personal IM use, and that disclosure and industry regulations are being followed.

Although use of IM management systems will be invisible to the user, as with any other form of communications monitoring, they should be made aware of its presence. It's also a good opportunity to remind users that as a corporately hosted application, IM should be treated with the same level of business focus as e-mail or the telephone.

According to Sakoda, using IM management applications is becoming a popular way of controlling the widespread use of public IM, while acknowledging that it has an important role to play.

"Organizations of all sizes have awakened to the productivity benefits of IM. All that they need to make it practical is a way to control and manage it rather than limit its use," he said. "IM management solutions make that possible."

Enterprise Instant Messaging

While some companies look to control existing IM usage, others are looking at a more radical solution. For an even greater level of control than an IM management system provides, you can choose to implement an Enterprise Instant Messaging, or EIM, system. EIM systems are complete IM systems that you host and run within your organization. Such systems allow extreme levels of control, management, and logging, which remove a large majority of the issues related to unmanaged public IM.

As well as being able to centrally manage and control IM use, EIM systems come with features that are typical to corporate applications such as centralized management, integration with directory services systems, and compatibility with third-party products such as virus checkers. Additionally, client software provided with EIM systems is typically more powerful than that available with public IM providers. For example, some EIM clients can be implemented using a policy-based system allowing features to be enabled or disabled depending on who is signing on. One user may have all features available to them, while another might have certain restrictions, such as not being able to send files or add new users to the contact list. All of this functionality is controlled centrally, allowing changes to the IM policy to be implemented very quickly.

If there is a drawback to EIM systems it would have to be that the function for which they are designed also limits their use. One of the attractions of public IM is that users can communicate with anyone, anywhere, who is on the same IM network. This is not the case with EIM, as you are basically on your own network. There are exceptions to this, however.

IBM has an agreement with AOL that allows AIM buddies to be added to the contact list in its SameTime Instant Messaging platform. On the same theme, the client for Microsoft's new Real-Time Collaboration (RTC) Server, formerly code-named Greenwich, allows contacts from RTC server, MSN Messenger, and Microsoft Exchange IM to be added to the contact list for a user.

Rather than providing support for multiple, but specific, IM platforms through an EIM client, other companies such as Sun Microsystems prefer to tackle the matter of compatibility by providing portal access for external users, as Dan Graves, Sun Microsystems' Group Product Manager, Real Time Messaging, explained.

"By providing secure IM access via a portal, we can provide cross-company IM functionality," Graves said. "Although this does not provide cross-network interoperability, which does need to happen in the future, it solves the problem in the near term.

In addition to approaches like this one by Sun, products are emerging that will allow IM systems to interoperate via a gateway — the idea being that with a gateway, each company can choose its EIM system based on its needs and then communicate with any other organization irrespective of what IM system the other company is using. It might seem like a novel concept, but as Ed Simnett, Lead Product Manager from Microsoft's Real-Time Messaging and Platform Group pointed out, it is not a new idea in the world of communications.

"IM connectivity will likely evolve in a similar way as the world's phone systems. Many countries use different phone systems, yet you can place a call from any system to any system transparently," he said. "In the same way, IM gateways will allow users from disparate IM systems to communicate with each other."

All this talk of EIM is well and good, but we must not forget the one simple principle that governs almost every business decision made by an organization: return on investment (ROI). The software that provides EIM functionality is not free, and may also require additional hardware to support it. Let's also remember the additional demands on system administrators and technical support staff associated with hosting and managing an internal application. The costs all start to add up, but how do the savings provided by EIM systems stack up against them?

Always ones to practice what it preaches, IBM has been using its Lotus SameTime product for some time and has seen direct results from its use.

"The IBM corporate IM system carries over 3.5 million messages per day," said Kevin McLellan, Marketing Manager, Workplace Collaboration Products, IBM Lotus software. "This level of traffic can be directly related to a 4 percent saving on phone usage, and is almost certainly related to $4 million per month saving on our business travel expenses. We have also seen a decreased demand on our e-mail servers, though of course this is offset somewhat by the additional load created by the IM traffic."

Although IBM may be an extreme example, it seems certain that other companies, even smaller ones, can gain a real benefit from using IM either directly, like savings on phone costs, or indirectly though improved efficiencies.

It is within those improved efficiencies where many believe the true savings lie. While it may be hard to quantify, proponents of IM would argue that the most likely cost benefits come from the ways in which IM functionality can have an impact on business processes.

"You can run a public IM client, but you are not going to get the application integration, which is where the true cost benefits of IM are to be found," said McLellan. "Add to that the additional security, control, logging, and management provided by an EIM system and it's easy to justify the additional costs created by using and EIM system."

It's a theme on which it seems that most of the large-scale EIM vendors agree. "Over the next few years," Graves said, "IM's underlying component of presence will become the basis for collaborative applications and not just one-to-one IM discussions. It will allow us to customize applications to include real-time instant communication functionality. This will allow us to improve the overall effectiveness of applications."

Certainly, talking to IM vendors and those associated with the industry, you get the feeling that we have yet to see all of the ways in which IM will influence business practices over the coming years.

"IM is at least as important as e-mail in terms of a business communication tool," Microsoft's Simnett said. "Because IM is based on presence, it gives you a probability of whether that person is present or available. This alone provides an advantage over phone and voicemail or e-mail in that it gives some indication of when you might get a response. It is this element of availability, or presence, which is set to transform the way in which we do business."

Coming next month as we continue our series on instant messaging, an in-depth look at some of the specific EIM offerings available on the market and at some of the factors that you should consider when specifying an EIM system for your business.

Read Part 3 of this series at: http://www.intranetjournal.com/articles/200307/ij_07_08_03a.html.