March 18, 2005

Security concerns are causing IT managers to block IM services; study also shows only a small number of companies have implemented presence technology elsewhere in their operations.

Nemertes Research has published a new benchmark study in which over three quarters (76%) of the interviewed IT executives say employees use instant messaging on the job, but that only 37% of the companies have standardized on an enterprise IM application. In 76% of companies, employees are the ones that brought IM into the enterprise

The report is called "The Virtual Workplace:Leveraging Real-Time Communications in the Enterprise" and its results are based on interviews with more than 40 IT executives from the same number of companies. In a similar study conducted last year by Nemertes, 90% of the IT executives reported employee IM use. "We attribute the decrease to an increased awareness of the security and compliance risks of consumer IM," says principal researcher Melanie Turek.