If you consider the implications that instant messaging (IM) has for your business, you'll find that it offers great potential for improving communication between employees and customers alike. IM software has advanced beyond text messaging to offer a suite of communications and conferencing applications. However, once you've decided that IM has a place in your business, you face the difficult decision of choosing which IM solution to use. They are not all created equal, and many of the systems don't play well with each other -- at least for now. One option is to set up your own internal IM solution using Exchange Server, Lotus Notes/SameTime, or another third-party application. Of course, this isn't always feasible, particularly for smaller businesses with a limited budget. A second option is to use a public IM provider, which offers the advantage of being inexpensive to implement and gives you the opportunity to begin taking advantage of IM without investing in new hardware or server software. The current market
As I mentioned in my previous article, the public IM provider market is dominated by the big three: AOL Instant Messenger (AIM), Microsoft MSN Messenger, and Yahoo Messenger. These three applications essentially support the same set of features but they're not compatible with each other. If you use just one of these services, you won't be able to communicate with people using the other two. So the key factor in choosing between them is making sure you'll be able to communicate with clients and partners. You need to look at the list of people (external to your organisation) you would like to communicate with via IM and ask them which IM system they use. This will help you adopt a system that is compatible with important partners, vendors, and/or clients. Of course, AOL has been mandated by the U.S. Federal Communications Commission (FCC) to open its AIM system to communicate with rival systems as a condition of approving its merger with Time Warner, Inc. AOL has continued to complain about the difficulties of making IM transparent but has nevertheless knuckled down and made some progress, initially working with IBM to test interconnectivity with IBM's Lotus SameTime IM application, a leader in the corporate IM market. Although other IM vendors are under less pressure to provide compatibility with competing applications, the market is nevertheless moving ponderously closer toward an interoperability standard. Both Microsoft and AOL have thrown their support behind a developing standard called SIMPLE, which stands for SIP for Instant Messaging and Presence Leveraging Extensions. This IETF standard is based on the Session Initiation Protocol (SIP), a signaling protocol that is used to establish Internet telephone calls, multimedia conferences, and chat sessions. There are competing standards, but they have fewer supporters and certainly none with the influence of Microsoft and AOL. Thus, SIMPLE will most likely be the winner in the standards war for IM interoperability, which should really propel the corporate use of IM. However, that doesn't mean you need to wait a year until victory is declared in the standards war. You just need to enter the fray with your eyes open.