WIRED ON FRIDAY from Silicon Valley: IM and its sibling EIM, enterprise instant messaging, is currently the most useful and fastest growing online communications application, writes Jaan Orvet.
The sales rep looked puzzled, almost shocked. After a couple of seconds he collected himself and continued the conversation. Hands were shaken, shoulders patted and the potential customer went on his way.
Once he was out of earshot the sales representative turned to his colleague, breaking the news with amazement. "He's not on IM, can you believe that?" The bemused colleague's slowly shaking head told it all, no he could not believe that.
My unplanned and quite innocent eavesdropping at an IT industry trade show highlighted one of the most interesting trends in online communications.
Instant messaging, or IM in case you were longing for another acronym, has in a fairly short period of time become an accepted, and expected, business tool.
Instant messaging is a cross between regular e-mail and a phone call. It allows people using the same software to "chat" in almost real time. After clicking a recipients name in a list, usually called the "buddy list" or something similar, the message is typed in to a window and sent.
The message then appears instantly on the recipients screen with a window for typing a reply. Both recipients see the previous messages and can file the dialogue to their hard drives.
According to the statisticians at Nielsen/NetRatings, a whopping 12.7 million Americans had used IM applications at work by the middle of last year.
According to another number crunching outlet, Osterman Research, 84 per cent of companies in the United States host some kind of IM activity on their networks. It's easy to see why this is the case. Speedy communications help us get more things done in less time.
From a user standpoint, the hurdles to adopting IM are fairly low as instant messaging has been popular among "consumers" for years. IM tools from companies including AOL, Microsoft and Yahoo have been flashing messages on to computer screens in homes across the world since the 1990s.
Because people have found IM useful they have acquired the necessary skills needed to use the technology and are now bringing them to the work place.
One elated chief information officer told me the training costs for adding IM to the communications mix at his firm had been the lowest ever for a new technology.
Here in the US, IM has gained extra credibility thanks to Uncle Sam. Several federal authorities including the Bureau of Land Management, Environmental Protection Agency and the FBI have embraced the technology.
They all happily type away in message windows created by WiredRed's software e/pop (www.wiredred.com).
Not the most impressive sounding name for a product, but the agencies seem happy with how it helps them do their jobs.
Does this mean that all is well in the land of IM? Well, no. There are several challenges ahead for the continued use and growth of IM. Today most of the tools run on their own protocols and networks, actively preventing instant messaging across applications. As I write this, I have three different instant messaging applications open, just to be able to communicate with the newspapers and magazines I write for.
This is the equivalent of not being able to call your client (or your dear old mother for that matter) because she is on another telephone network than you. It's plain silly.
Logging and archiving messages sent in the line of work is still somewhat of a headache, despite EIM solutions that incorporate these basic features.
It comes as no surprise that the financial industry is trying to iron out the creases. UBS Warburg, JP Morgan Chase, Deutsche Bank and other financial institutions got together and formed the Financial Services Instant Messaging Association (FIMA).
Their goal is simple, to gently but firmly push the makers of EIM software towards common standards. Increased compatibility leads to easier administration and simplified security measures. A less cluttered computer desktop is an added bonus.
A third problem is money. Despite IM being around for a while, no one has been able to create a good business model around it.
Sales of enterprise servers and software generates money for companies like WiredRed, IMlogic (www.imlogic.com) and Asynchrony (www.asolutions.com), but the largest group of users - i.e. you, me and our friends - are still an untapped resource.
For us this is a good thing. IM spam is still fairly unusual, even though users of MSN Messenger have had some experience with it. We can control whom we have on our "buddy lists" and when we chat with them.
For the people in charge of making money, this is a bad thing. They want to engage us in revenue-generating activities and, down the line, they will probably succeed in one way or another. But, with some luck, we have another two to three years of fairly uninterrupted communicating ahead of us.
The first commercially satisfying use of IM will probably be in presence-enabled services. For example, your phone company might "see" that you are online and send you a message that user "Mum" on your buddy list just left a voice message on your home phone. Your airline of choice would inform you that you can stay at the office for another two hours as your flight to Oslo is delayed due to a snowstorm.
Regardless of what the future holds, the use of instant messaging is growing as we speak. And if you are not using IM yet, it might be time to start. If for no other reason than to make sure sales reps at trade shows don't have a reason to laugh behind your back.
Jaan Orvet is a Swedish IT journalist based in Silicon Valley.
