Instant messaging - you will end up using it

You are either an instant messaging (IM) convert or you see colleagues with an IM box open all day on their monitor and wonder how they get away with wasting so much time.

Alright, that may be an overly simplistic characterisation. You may not think IM unproductive, even if you don't use it. As one Gartner analyst recently said, to do so is to be "curmudgeonly and stupid". Ouch. The ignorant thought the same thing for years about mobile phones, email and unlimited web access, he said.

In fact, Gartner is encouraging CIOs to make IM one of their priorities for 2003. There are several reasons for that - it is an achievable real-time enterprise project, there are immediate business benefits and so on - but let's simply say its time has come.

It will be bigger than email - in terms of network traffic - in a year or two because it is frequently more useful. Unlike emails, which are often sent not knowing when a recipient can reply, IM depends on presence. We'll hear a lot more about that in coming months. When you know someone else is online when you are, interactions can be more valuable.

And remember, IM is already coming to wireless mobile devices, which are always-on to a much larger degree than the average PC. Cue pervasive messaging.

There are barriers. The main consumer IM flavours - MSN Messenger, Yahoo! Messenger and AIM and ICQ, both from AOL - don't work with each other. But they will, eventually, now the Extensible Messaging and Presence Protocol (XMPP) has been rubber-stamped.

Then there is the lack of record keeping. An individual may quite like not having megabytes of deleted messages but an IT department will freak out when they're asked to dig up some slur that went out of the company by IM and is referred to in a lawyer's letter fresh on the CEO's desk.

Most corporates also like to have their own branded systems, tying in with intranets and so on.

These points are being addressed. And the main consumer IM providers are eager to become corporate providers. They see the opportunity.

And then there are specialist IM offerings. Reuters, for example, has launched a secure service to banks and other financial institutions.

Time to sign up.