The corporate market could signal a reversal of fortune for AOL in instant messaging, an area it has dominated since it acquired instant messenger ICQ in 1998. AOL claims 150 million screen names for AIM, plus more than 130 million screen names for ICQ. Designed for the consumer, AOL communications applications often have been met with hostility in the workplace. Even at AOL Time Warner, AOL-designed email proved so unwieldy in a corporate setting that the company rescinded a rule mandating its use. Meanwhile, the amount of time people spend chatting on instant messengers at work is ballooning. People in 82 percent of all organisations are using some sort of IM application, with 70 percent of those using AIM, according to a report issued by Osterman Research this year. Microsoft's MSN Messenger is a distant second with 51 percent, and Yahoo Messenger third with 44 percent. But those numbers account for both official and unofficial IM use. As companies begin to create standards for corporate-grade software, AIM's lead could deteriorate to the benefit of the corporate IM crowd. According to Osterman, IM use is official in only 34 percent of large organisations, 23 percent of medium-sized organisations, and 19 percent of small organisations; a full 23 percent of organisations surveyed blocked IM traffic at the firewall. Among organisations that use instant messaging in an official capacity, Lotus Sametime captures 69 percent of the market, the research firm found. Burton's Kobielus called AOL's VeriSign deal, "too little, too late. Even if it provides tight encryption, it's not an enterprise-hostable solution. The business-grade market has opened up." Despite the early perception that AOL ruled the IM market, companies have carved out various IM niches inside and out of the business world. In the world of finance, that market owes its vitality in large part to SEC regulations, Rule 17a-4 in particular mandating the archiving of trading communications. One company, Communicator, markets HubIM specifically for use by financial services firms. Customers include Credit Suisse First Boston, Goldman Sachs, J.P. Morgan, Lehman Brothers, Merrill Lynch, Morgan Stanley and Salomon Smith Barney. Other secure IM products in use by financial institutions include Divine's MindAlign and WiredRed. "It's quite a boost in IM's perceived business value when Wall Street gets behind it," said Kobielus, who added that several financial firms have banned traditional, unencrypted IM applications in the workplace. Creating their own space
When Enterprise AIM hits the market, it will face scores of competitors, mostly small companies, offering secure instant messaging among an array of other tools. These include email, file transfers, conferences, message broadcasts, and message archiving and security. These last two features are of increasing importance to financial services companies, which are in many cases required by the Securities and Exchange Commission to log all instant messages. Other corporate IM competitors include Jabber, Mercury Prime, QuickSilver, 2Way, Ikimbo, Ezenia, NetLert, ACD Systems, Bantu, and Comverse's Odigo unit, acquired last week. In the coming months, AOL will likely face tougher competition for the corporate IM market from bigger guns as well. Lotus Development, a unit of IBM, was early to the corporate IM game with its introduction of the Sametime application in December 1998. Microsoft's Exchange software features IM software, and Novell markets a corporate IM application based on AIM called InstantMe. Ericsson, in conjunction with Oz, marketed until recently a secure wireless IM product called iPulse. Ericsson has since scrapped that project in favor of the Wireless Village, or Mobile Instant Messaging and Presence Initiative, with Motorola and Nokia for promoting interoperability between mobile IM systems. "Somebody is going to be the powerhouse of corporate IM," Kobielus predicted. "It's going to consolidate down to two or three providers, probably Lotus or Microsoft because they already have the groupware market locked up." AOL is working to insert itself into this market, making its system interoperable at the server level with corporate IM applications marketed by Sun Microsystems and Lotus. Despite the proliferation of IM services, few will likely survive, Kobielus predicted. "There are going to be a lot of casualties," he said. Evan Hansen contributed to this report.
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