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Welcome to Part Four, the last in our series of articles on Instant Messaging (IM). So far we have covered a broad range of IM topics, including a discussion of the things that you should consider when implementing an IM system, and a look the some of the IM offerings available.

To close out this series, and give you a real perspective of how IM can fit into a business, we talked to a company that has made IM an integral part of its communications structure. We also chatted to a provider of IM software who has helped to provide IM for, among others, one of the largest Internet service providers in the US.

IM in the Real World

With 31 offices worldwide, and more than 800 desktop systems, executive recruitment consultancy Russell Reynolds Associates has the kind of corporate structure where IM can thrive. The company first started using IM eight years ago when it developed a basic in-house system that allowed two users to communicate in real-time over the network. Hosted on Novell NetWare servers, this rudimentary IM system was useful enough to convince the company that IM had a serious part to play in their communications infrastructure.

With the implementation of Microsoft Exchange, Russell Reynolds moved to using Exchange Messenger as their internal IM client, though the lack of detailed reporting and logging was a concern right from the beginning. Gavin Atkinson, director of global applications development explains. "There have been times when people have asked for copies of their IM conversations and you have to say 'no' because Exchange Messenger does not provide that. The problem is that the lack of reporting and logging also affects us. We can't monitor IM conversations between users like we do with e-mail."

When Microsoft recently made the decision to pull the messenger functionality out of Exchange Server 2003 and place it into a separate product, Real Time Collaboration Server, Atkinson decided it was time to re-examine the role of IM in the business, and look at some other ways that IM functionality could be provided.

Before starting to look at what IM offerings were available, Atkinson set out to get an accurate picture of IM usage by conducting a company-wide survey. The results surprised even him. "Eighty-five percent of users said that they use IM on a regular basis, which was higher than we thought. What was even more surprising was that 25 percent of users reported clients asking if they could communicate with us via IM."

This was an aspect of IM use that, to this point, had not been considered as a large benefit. "So, we asked our users if they would like to talk to clients via IM, and a staggering 70 percent said that they would if they could. This is a sufficiently high number to cause us to look at providing IM connectivity to external clients."

To this point, Russell Reynolds has permitted certain users to load a public IM client such as AOL Instant Messenger on their desktop, but only if a specific business case can be proven. Otherwise, IM use is strictly internal. Atkinson knows that if a new solution is to answer all of the company's needs, it will need to provide "public" connectivity as well as providing the kind of logging and management that the existing IM system doesn't offer.

Coming up favorite at the moment for Russell Reynolds is a hosted IM solution called Omnipod. As well as providing connectivity with other IM networks via connectors and gateways, Omnipod provides the level of logging and control that Atkinson considers necessary for an enterprise level managed IM implementation.

Omnipod, which provides enough security to meet the National Association of Securities Dealers (NASD) instant messaging and electronic communication requirements, comes in at about $4 a month per user. Atkinson feels this is a reasonable price to pay for such a solution, although it still represents a sizable increase over their existing IM investment. "Our current IM system is hosted out of a single server in New York. With Exchange Messenger being included with our Exchange licenses, I couldn't say that we have really made any additional investment in the provision of IM." Few other corporate applications can offer such a level of ROI.

Whatever the choice of a new IM system, Atkinson sees the provision of logging and auditing to be of more use as a reactive tool than a way of controlling users IM activities. "Russell Reynolds does not have a specific IM usage policy in place. Our standard IS policy covers acceptable use of all means of communication including email, telephone and IM. We have not felt the need to create a specific policy for IM use, though this might change in the future."

Looking to the future, Atkinson can see that there might be presence-based applications that could benefit the company. For now, though, he is more interested in providing a secure, managed IM system that can be expanded as necessary.

"We are seeing a great deal on interest in sending SMS [short message services] messages via IM." he says. "Having a feature such as this allows us to extend the reach of our communications structure to what constitutes an increasingly mobile workforce."

So What About You?

The Russell Reynolds story — that of a controlled, progressive implementation of IM — is less common than you might think. For many companies, the decision to gain control over IM only comes when they realize that many people within the organization are already using public IM products like AOL Instant Messenger or MSN Messenger. It's a problem referred to by Joe Hildebrand, chief architect at IM software provider Jabber Inc. as the "crabgrass" issue.

"Many companies find that there are pockets of users who are using public IM systems without any centralized management or control. Simply taking IM functionality away from these users often results in them finding another way to gain IM access. Just like crabgrass, you can get rid of it, but sooner or later it comes back," Hildebrand said.

Hildebrand speaks from experience having helped literally hundreds of companies move from uncontrolled public IM to Jabber Inc.'s Enterprise Instant Messaging (EIM) platform, Jabber XCP. Jabber Inc.'s impressive customer list includes organizations such as France Telecom, and Internet service provider Bell South which provides Jabber IM to more than 1 million customers.

When faced with the proliferation of public IM, many companies choose to ban IM access completely. This tends to be an unpopular choice, particularly with users who have come to rely on IM as an important corporate communications tool. One solution, as we discussed back in part one, is to use IM proxies, although Hildebrand is quick to caution against this as a long-term solution.

"Using IM proxies does give you control over the use of public IM systems, but that's where it ends," he said. "Sending messages between users is barely scratching the surface of IM's capabilities, and using an IM proxy provides none of these other benefits."

The benefits that Hildebrand is referring to are things like integrated systems that are able to leverage the presence element of IM, and combine it with intelligent applications. One example of such an application is that of an IM bot that is able to interpret and respond to inquiries via IM.

Imagine, for example, instant messaging your insurance company to find out how to change your address, and not only getting a standard response from an IM bot, but also having that bot send you, over IM, a form that you can fill out with your new address. Through LDAP the information you provide can then be validated and placed straight into the directory store. It is applications like these that represent just one of the many possibilities of IM now and in the future.

The Bottom Line

So that draws our series on IM to a close. Over the course of these four articles we have looked at how IM came into being, examined some of the challenges that corporate IM users face, and provided you with a snapshot of some of the more popular IM products available today. The only question that remains, if you are not using IM in your organization already, is whether IM has a place in your business. Based on everything we have seen, it's a question of "when," not "if."