What future IM?

Setting up buddy lists with colleagues on other sites, or friends from other companies, is the most pervasive use of IM in the enterprise. But it's not the only one. Anthony Plewes discovers that conferencing, collaboration and document management are all getting the message...

Instant messaging is making its way into the conference call. It has become the electronic equivalent of a message slipped underneath the desk at school. "When you are on a conference call,” says Francis de Souza, chief executive of IM application developer, IM Logic, “the telltale tap-tap of a keyboard indicates one of the participants having a private conversation. It functions a little like a whisper and has fundamentally changed the way a conference call works."

Conferencing is a key arena for IM to play a facilitating role. The major conferencing vendors are already deploying solutions that include messaging and presence functionality. Setting up a conference call has always been fairly laborious, having to coordinate and schedule the diaries of several participants.

"IM and presence detection enables voice, video and web conferencing meetings to take place in a more ad hoc and impromptu way," explains Tony Heyworth, marketing director EMEA at conferencing company Polycom. "Users can see if their colleagues are ‘in their offices’, online and available to chat."

Users can use IM to establish whether a discussion needed to be escalated into a multipoint conference. If necessary it immediately allows participants to fire up a web conferencing application to share documents and data. It is hardly surprising that IM companies are working hard on integrating their functionality into web conferencing products such as Facetime’s recent partnering with web conferencing companies Latitude and Web-Ex.

"From within the IM session you just type 'Go Web-Ex' and this would fire-up a Web-Ex conferencing session," says Christopher Dean of Facetime. This is possible because the Facetime platform acts as a wraparound standard IM clients, scanning content for key words.

Although IM can play a big part in driving collaboration in projects, the ambition is not new. Document management companies have been working on similar functionality for years.

"IM is only one of a smorgasbord of technologies which come under the collaboration umbrella," explains David Gingell, VP of marketing EMEA for Documentum.

In fact, Documentum's eRoom application includes chat functionality as part of the collaboration process. Although this is a proprietary, closed environment, it is an obvious area for IM to penetrate. Certainly Microsoft's foray into enterprise IM with the Office Live Communications Server, will pave the way for standard IM networks to play a massive role in document collaboration efforts.

IM and presence is already helping remote teams work together closer. Glyn Evans, business development manager at Nortel Networks, says that his entire team is based either at home or on the road. Sending email or leaving voicemails is frustrating. "Being able to speak to someone immediately or finding out that someone is not available means that you have achieved something," he explains. "You know you are not being ignored."

The presence functionality in IM gives co-workers an insight into what their colleagues are doing at any given time. So when a team is dispersed, IM can bring them closer together.

Although many examples of enterprise IM focus on its formal use in applications such as supply chain management, IM is also very effective in supporting informal arrangements. For example, an engineering company which needs to buy a number of standard widgets, could use buddy lists for each particular widget, send out a request to those on the list who are available and then see who can deliver in the required time frame. This sort of activity is often carried out over the telephone but IM, with proper logging, will give the company an audit trail.

The next big step for IM is to enable applications to use presence information. This opens up a whole new realm of possibilities for workflow. An application could route a document according to which person on the appropriate list is available to deal with a certain action, such as a sign off, explains IM Logic’s de Souza. For example, when a financial application receives an invoice in Spanish, it could forward the document to an available Spanish-speaking accounts person, using a combination of skills information and presence.

Automation is already making an appearance in IM networks through interactive IM-based bots. Although they were popularised by marketers in the public networks, these bots can be used to link into enterprise applications. For example, IM bot developer ActiveBuddy has developed an HR Agent bot which employees can query about common human resources questions. The bot integrates with company HR systems such as PeopleSoft and recognises hundreds of common human resources requests.

"The range of opportunities for businesses to boost productivity and improve their customer relationships is impressive," says James Pankiewicz, consultant at Conchango. "Just like email, instant messaging is rapidly becoming a core technology in the workplace and at home, so strategists need to be taking serious note."

While there is little doubt that IM will play an important role integrated in enterprise applications, we must not think it is a solution looking for a killer application. It is a channel for communication and will be primarily used to communicate. Email replacement is where it is making most impact now and this is likely to remain its primary use for the foreseeable future. All these future applications are exciting but they will only achieve mainstream use once IM has been accepted as a communications channel throughout the enterprise.