Instant Messaging At The Office

from the slow-and-slower dept

It seems that companies are taking their time in figuring out what to do about employees instant messaging at the office. While many employees have simply downloaded one (or, usually, more) of the popular IM clients out there, companies don't necessarily like that. They're afraid of uncontrolled communications. Banks are especially concerned since communications are regulated by the SEC (hence those crazy disclaimers on emails from most banking employees). So, a number of companies are working on "secure" IM platforms for corporate users that will archive all messagiges, but will also prevent them from talking with anyone outside the company. Most of this (of course) wouldn't be that big of a problem if there were an open IM standard that would let the various systems communicate with each other, but thanks to AOL (and now Microsoft), that's not going to be around for quite some time. However, if the special "corporate" IM systems can only communicate with each other, companies will be cutting themselves off from one of the most effective ways of communicating with their customers.

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