When the employees at Avnet Computer Marketing want to send an important message to colleagues or customers, they don’t necessarily reach for a telephone or e-mail. More often than not, the information is typed into an instant messaging (IM) application. "You can just bounce a couple of lines across to somebody and get an answer," says Dave Stuttard, vice president of application solutions for the Tempe, Ariz.-based computer products distributor.

IM software, long favored by gossipy teenagers, is now donning a suit and showing up for work. The software, popularized by programs such as AOL Instant Messenger, Microsoft’s MSN Messenger, Yahoo Messenger, ICQ and IRC, is being adopted?albeit often reluctantly?by a rapidly growing number of enterprises. "I think you’re going to see IM use grow much faster than e-mail use," says Michael Osterman, president of Osterman Research, a technology research company in Black Diamond, Wash.

ComScore Networks, a Reston, Va.-based audience ratings company, estimates that the number of work-based IM users rose 10 percent during the first six months of 2002, reaching 17.4 million active users. "The same services that people have early-on adopted for use at home, mainly for social reasons, are now catching on at work," says Max Kalehoff, a senior manager at ComScore.

Unlike e-mail, IM can deliver messages directly to a recipient’s desktop, where it’s likely to receive immediate attention. The technology can also be used for customer support and to simultaneously send messages to dozens or even thousands of users.

Yet as IM software enters the business mainstream, many CIOs are concerned that IM will open yet another door through which hackers can crawl. They also worry that IM will sap productivity.

Meet the Players

Despite the questions, IM’s popularity has drawn a variety of vendors into the field. And their easily downloadable tools often appear at enterprises that have yet to adopt a formal IM strategy. "Most of the IMing at work is done through the big-brand instant messaging services," says Kalehoff. Osterman notes that enterprise adoption of IM technology is lagging far behind employee demand. "Only about 30 percent of companies have established a corporate standard for IM," Osterman says. On the other hand, he notes, about 85 percent of companies have some level of IM activity.

Capitalizing on the fact that their products already contain an IM-type technology, conferencing and collaboration software vendors such as Groove Networks and Lotus Software are also entering the field. Lotus, which sells Sametime collaboration software, has already gained a solid foothold in the enterprise IM market. "Among organizations that have actually established a standard, about 60 percent have established Sametime as the standard," says Osterman. Unlike consumer IM software, Sametime provides several enterprise-class management and security features, such as integration with corporate directories and encryption.