“You there?” IM users remember - the firewalls have ears
No other communications medium has spread through the business community with such vivacity as IM. Analysts believe that of the hundreds of millions of IM users around the world about a third are business users. But don't tell that to chief executives. Most don't believe it even exists in their organisations.
"Myth number one about instant messaging is that bosses say 'There is no IM use in my company'," comments Francis de Souza, CEO of enterprise messaging firm IM Logic. "I spoke to a CEO of a global business recently with 80,000 staff all over the world. He said he knew what IM was – his daughter used it – but there was no use of it in his company. He was adamant. He called me back a couple of weeks later," he explains. "He started investigating, found out that wasn't the case. He stopped counting at 20,000."
This story is increasingly common throughout UK firms. Anyone with internet access can download a public IM system like AIM, ICQ, MSN or Yahoo!. Barring them will not work outright, nor will blocking a port on the firewall, it seems, because they will find another client somewhere on the internet.
