Like it or not, instant messaging in the enterprise is here to stay. But rather than being on the back foot, it's time for all corporations, both big and small, to come forth and embrace this technology. Similar to how you look at half a glass of water—half-empty or half-full—Instant Messaging, or IM for short, can be perceived to have a positive or negative impact on productivity depending on the way you look at it. When you wake up to the importance of IM, you'll notice that, if properly managed, IM can increase connectivity within the realm of your business and have a positive impact on productivity.
This book is about managing and fostering IM as a real-time collaboration and communication tool. It's not about the 'why', although why IM is important, but rather it is about the 'what' and 'how'—what IM offers and how you can use it to your advantage.
Most people who use the Internet have been exposed to IM. Like email, IM is a user-centric technology. It offers something you want to use by addressing a basic human need—the need to communicate. There are dozens of public IM services: companies ranging from the leading software developer, Microsoft, to the leading web application developers, Yahoo and Google, offer free IM services. To make sure you use them, they also develop IM clients that work across platforms—from Microsoft Windows, Apple MacOSX, and Linux, to handheld devices like your mobile phone and PDA.
While you may be using IM to discuss weekend plans to pick up your aunt from across town, or kill time discussing the latest movie with a bunch of friends, IM also holds the potential to eliminate conversation blues in your workplace. Ever thought your boss was inaccessible? Wondered how to communicate your ideas to all of the members of your team without wasting time organizing a group meeting? IM is the key to all of these problems. In this chapter, we will discuss:
The problems with using IM in an enterprise
The advantages of IM over email and telephone
The benefits of hosting your own Enterprise Instant Messaging (EIM) server instead of using one of the free public ones
Some of the features to look for in a EIM solution
Openfire's features
Now that companies are beginning to acknowledge the issue of employees using IM during company hours, they face a difficult choice. Blocking IM also stops employees from using it as a means to communicate with clients or other employees. Thankfully, several organizations aren't opting for this "easy" way out. In my personal experience, more and more companies are trying not to curb the proliferation of IM, but are rather taking steps to manage its use—looking for ways to oversee and control IM.
Let's take a short history lesson so that you will know how it all began and will be able to get things in perspective. When enterprises woke up to the benefits of IM, they also felt the need to control its use, and they ran into a void. IM was a public service. There wasn't any business-grade IM software that would provide the security and legal compliance expected from enterprise software. This void was filled in 1998, when IBM launched the first "Enterprise Instant Messaging" (EIM) software, called IBM Lotus Sametime. Microsoft quickly followed suit, first in haste with Microsoft Exchange Instant Messaging, and more properly later with Microsoft Office Live Communications Server.
Today, EIM is a multi-billion dollar business.