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World Enterprise Instant Messaging Markets
Frost & Sullivan, July 2004
End-User Education Vital to Address Archiving- and Security-Related Issues
The use of unregulated consumer instant messaging (IM) applications for business purposes in enterprises is proving to be a concern for IT managers all over the world. Public IM opens up a host of security threats to the enterprise. Moreover, with greater emphasis on compliance, it is even more necessary to archive and log all IM conversations for auditing purposes. Currently, the lure and reach of free public IM outweigh the benefits of an enterprise IM (EIM) system. This trend is expected to continue for the next five years, during which, EIM vendors are likely to step up their efforts to educate end users of its benefits and attain true interoperability between products.
This research examines the world EIM systems market. This study discusses significant industry challenges and market drivers and restraints that vendors face and provides strategic recommendations for vendors to increase their presence and profitability in the EIM space.
Converged Applications Enhance Connectivity between People and Systems
Convergence and collaboration are the buzzwords in the enterprise market. Present day IM integrates with attendance management, conferencing, and collaboration capabilities. A combination of these functions will enhance employee productivity and flexibility. EIM is an application of presence monitoring technology, providing a real-time context about the user as it can detail whether a person is online, and the modes of communication through which he/she can be reached, says the analyst.
Collaboration and presence information make potent market drivers. They encourage more end users to integrate IM with other enterprise applications such as desktop productivity suites and enterprise resource planning (ERP) packages. Market leaders have also invested in integrating EIM applications and other enterprise offerings. This trend is projected to give a huge boost to adoption rates in future.
Collaborative IM Has the Potential to Be a Blockbuster Technology
As EIM becomes progressively more popular in the future, users are likely to increasingly demand integration of IM with other enterprise technologies such as voice/video/Web conferencing, ERP packages, e-mail applications, and white boarding tools. IM is expected to further spur contextual collaboration such as the type provided by the Microsoft LCS line of products.
Integration of IM into various applications such as project management tools, document sharing/management applications, calendars, and desktop productivity applications improves the level of collaboration available to users. The ability to provide conference functions to multiple users through different media including voice, video, and Web while sharing desktops and applications, revolutionizes the concept of business meetings, notes the analyst. Enterprises are expected to invest in EIM for these advantages, thus driving up the profitability and growth of EIM vendors.
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