Fast Forward Your Business with Instant
Messaging
By Lee Traupel
Instant Messaging is rapidly becoming accepted in
the business community as a viable communications tool
and process - it's faster than e-mail, free on the client
side, even a novice user can easily grasp the interface
in just a few minutes and it enables remote workers
and business partners to "talk" and share files and
information effortlessly using the in-place infrastructure
of the internet. Its mushrooming in popularity too -
according to IDC, corporate and general business users
will jump from 5.5M in 2001 to close to 200M by 2004.
What are some of the pitfalls and concerns you need
to have when assessing and integrating Instant Messaging
("IM" another biz acronym) with your business processes?
Be aware you are sending clear text messages over the
public Internet - so all IM technology is inherently
insecure. Privacy issues can also be raised - these
messages are typically archived via the IM servers of
the company whose services you are using and can be
made public at a later date. Anyone with a network scanner
may have access to and be reading your messages and
if your are downloading files, you need to ensure your
anti-virus software is setup to scan these files when
you open them.
One of the biggest pitfalls of the technology and process
is that it adds another communications layer to your
busy day - but you can offset this by selecting or filtering
who you communicate with at any point by using the IM
interface to block all or selected individuals from
"seeing" you when you are online.
Finally, like all things in today's computer industry
(or many) each of the Instant Messaging vendors are
trying to build applications which don't integrate with
the other (no surprise here - arrogance has not faded
away in the business community!). So, you need to assess
the installed base of the market leaders and make a
decision on which company's product you want to utilized
- my recommendation would be to review Microsoft's or
AOL/Time Warner's products - their installed bases are
in the 200 million users plus when combined (these numbers
include consumer and business usage) and they both work
well and have user interfaces that are intuitive.
There is one alternative company that is solving the
"IM Tower of Babel" issues and claims to integrate well
with all proprietary apps by utilizing XML technology,
Jabber, Inc., www.jabber.com So, if interoptability
is important to you then I would recommend assessing
their products.
Most of the IM providers including Microsoft are integrating
voice communications with their IM clients - you may
be able to bypass your local telephone carrier at some
point using this technology, but don't bet on it anytime
soon - all of those lobbyists here in the states need
to keep generating fees on behalf of their telecom clients
in Washington D.C. We use Microsoft's IM product and
we have upon occasion utilized the voice and video features
(you must of course have a multimedia setup for your
PC and camera) and they do work. Although the video
quality is a little jerky and the voice is akin to the
old Citizens Band ("CB") radio - your Internet connection
impacts the quality of both.
Whose technology do you choose? There are some clear
market leaders in the Instant Messaging marketing including
Microsoft (no surprise here) http://messenger.microsoft.com
But, like most Microsoft technology/tools you pay a
price for the software/services, albeit a small one.
You have to register with Microsoft's NET Passport www.microsoft.com/myservices/passport
service which is designed to be a universal login -
this only takes a few minutes but be forewarned they
also try to get you to setup a Hot Mail account, but
you can work around this.
The other dominant IM product is AOL's ICQ product
http://web.icq.com - it has similar functionality as
Microsoft's application. A great Israeli company, Mirabellis,
Inc., subsequently acquired by AOL, developed the original
technology. My chief complaint with this product is
the irritating banner ads that AOL keeps pushing at
you when you are utilizing their product. But, it's
a small price to pay for a free product on the client
side.
Yahoo also has an IM product ("Yahoo Messenger") but
I am not convinced this will stay as a core part of
their business, as they appear to be still trying to
figure out what they are going to become in the post
".com gold rush era" market; i.e. Portal, Directory,
Media giant, software/services company, etc. And, they've
certainly jettisoned parts of their business the last
12-18 months and I would wager they've had discussions
about getting out of the IM business. Finally, IM is
also quickly moving into other markets and devices including
PDAs and Pagers - if you're a real geek and you can't
stand to be out of touch while your in the shower and
you have a water proof device you can ping away. But,
I think we all need some down time for friends and family,
but wanted to make sure I covered all possible bases
with this column - until next time!
About the author:
Lee Traupel has 20 plus years of business development
and marketing experience - he is the founder of Intelective
Communications, Inc. http://www.intelective.com,
a marketing services and software company which provides
strategic and tactical marketing services exclusively
to small to medium sized companies.
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