By Melanie Turek, Nemertes Senior Vice President

January 4 2005

2004 In Review: Last year provided some interesting surprises and events in messaging. In some cases I was surprised, in others I just thought the events were significant. In any case, here they are:

1. I was surprised by the slow decision on the part of IT managers to get control over IM. Today, 76% of IT executives say employees use instant messaging on the job, but only 37% are standardized on an enterprise IM application.

2. The enormous growth of spam in the enterprise was very important. It grows quickly everywhere, of course, but it is now a major headache and consumer of resources in IT departments...

2005 Predictions: Predictions are easy to make, but hard to prove. Here are some of my favorites for next year.

1. We'll see some rapid growth of viruses, spam and other malware in instant messaging systems and environments.

2. There will be an increase in the willingness of companies to deploy IP-based conferencing, thanks to their newly converged networks...

For more reviews and predictions, please read the complete article at http://www.messagingpipeline.com/56900302