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IM: Managing the medium, managing the message
Does your organisation have the presence of mind to get IM right?

By Stewart Baines

Published: Wednesday 24 September 2003

Choosing IM as a new means of corporate communications is not a decision to be made by IT managers or the board. The decision has already been made, with hundreds of millions of instant messages leaving corporate desktops everyday. Companies now face the challenge of how to manage the medium effectively, says Stewart Baines.

A key differentiator of instant messaging and that other pillar of electronic communication – email – is that there is no inherent way of storing, managing and searching through instant messages where as the email inbox has rapidly become the filing cabinet of the information age, a record of every transaction, assignment or amendment.

Most IM applications, including the big four public ones, offer session logging but it needs to be set voluntarily, is difficult to search and allows no way for network or compliance managers to view the contents. New regulations, particularly from financial authorities, will force companies to tackle this issue.

"Businesses are not being drawn to IM, they are being compelled to make a decision about it. Business of all kinds are using IM for business communications either with or without the knowledge and consent of their IT departments and executive management," says Gwenael Hagan, Jabber Inc VP. "Ignoring the proliferation of IM occurring throughout their business is perilous."

Floodgates are open

Most instant messaging use remains unregulated. Employees can download one of the four big IM clients – AOL, ICQ, MSN or Yahoo! - from just about anywhere, and most firewalls are not set up to prevent their use. Important decisions and transactions are made every day over a medium in the public domain. Security is obviously a concern, as are viruses, worms and Trojans that can be carried in attachments – like email.

Fortunately the number of security scares relating to IM are insignificant compared to email but as the medium becomes more popular and attachments more common that is certain to change.

"The corporate customers I've worked with are recognising that the ability to quickly and informally ask questions and opinions of internal and external contacts without the lead time of setting up a meeting is a great boost to productivity," says Lester Hewett, a consultant with Microsoft integrator Avanade. "But the security risk of undocumented agreements and decisions is definitely weighing heavily on their minds."

But basic guidelines are probably all that is needed. Don't attach files, don't mention people's full names or sensitive company information and don't make any promises. Words like 'guarantee' can easily be sniffed out by context filtering software as part of an enterprise-grade IM platform but with public clients word checking is more onerous.

Just the presence of auditing software may be sufficient to prevent extreme misuse. "Logging is not just for legal reasons," argues Mark Kenyon, regional director IBM Lotus. "It encourages users not to waste too much time on idle conversations. When people realise they're being logged, they're much more cautious. I think we have very disciplined use of IM here. [Employees] know it's stored so they're quite careful."

Work hard, type harder

IM need not necessarily be a millstone for compliance officers, or a bane to workflow managers. The proliferation of avid users suggests that it does have merits as a valuable business tool – it can't be all work-avoidance. But its success seems to be email's loss.

"Instant messaging is an incredibly useful tool. I use it all the time," explains Guy Bunker, chief scientist at software firm Veritas. "We've got offices spread out all over the world – in the US, India, UK – and many flexible workers, so it's a great way of collaborating on projects. It's really good if you have a three second question because its much more convenient than email. My email inbox is suffering from the glut of spam."

Bunker often uses IM to enhance a standard audio conference. Yahoo Messenger, which his teams tend to use, supports desktop video conferencing as well as instant messaging, adding a richer texture to the conference.

He's not the only senior executive to be enamoured. IBM Lotus' Kenyon also prefers IM to email, particularly for collaborating with disparate colleagues on specific projects. "I personally don't find IM intrusive. Email is more intrusive as I get many more unwanted messages. If I'm busy I just put a flag up saying so, to contact me only if urgent."

IT is not the only industry to have embraced instant messaging. The financial services industry is equally keen. Most brokers use IM to chat with colleagues and external traders, and have been doing so for years. Informal agreements on transactions are often made via IM rather than over the phone as had previously been the case. The practice spread fast and wide without support from management at investment banks. If compliance with new financial regulations meant forcing the withdrawal of every IM client on the trading floor, brokers would revolt. Instead, brokerages are learning how to love the problem.

"Compliance officers are typically risk averse and they have concerns about IM over public networks. This is not like the trading floor application that runs over a private network," explains Glynn Baker, UK managing director of IM management software firm Facetime. "There's little control over IM, yet it is subject to the same regulation as other communications channels. That's why compliance officers are driving IT managers to deploy corporate solutions or sophisticated logging and auditing tools."

Banks have had to look for management tools that can support compliancy regulations. Recognising its widespread use, a number, including Credit Suisse, JP Morgan Chase, Lehmans, Merrill Lynch, Morgan Stanley and UBS Warburg established the Financial Services Instant Messaging Association to encourage public IM providers to adopt industry standards for interoperability.

Reuters, recognising an opportunity, developed an IM client traversing its own network. While not wholly secure, it is better than the more public systems. Reuters is hoping its IM platform will become the de facto system for the whole of financial services industry.

As companies begin to realise that IM may be an opportunity rather than another burden, other qualities of instant messaging will emerge. Its real time nature means that presence is an integral quality. If you log on, you're available, if you don't, you're not. This is the most simple form of presence but steadily more sophisticated presence information is being incorporated into public and enterprise IM platforms. Office, location, availability, choice of comms channels ('Email me but don't call') can be built up to provide a rich profile of people's working behaviour. Many enterprise directory services are already building in presence management.