By Melanie Turek, Nemertes Principal Analyst
April 2004, WSTA Ticker

Instant Messaging, or IM, is a rogue technology that's here to stay. It gained traction among consumers (specifically, young consumers, and later, their parents) before making its way into the corporate world. But a recent benchmark research series from Nemertes Research LLC, "Getting a Grip on Collaboration," shows that today, fully 90% of companies are running IM on their networks.

Instant messaging lets users send pop-up messages to other people using the same IM software whenever they're online at the same time. Its real-time nature makes it a very useful tool for back-channeling during meetings, as well as for getting simple answers quickly. But its history as a consumer application means that the free IM services in use in most organizations today lack enterprise-class security, reporting and management capabilities. So although IM is fast becoming a must-have business tool, it can also be a headache for unprepared IT managers who don't take steps to control the instant messaging running over their networks.

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