Instant messaging has cemented its place as an important business tool. Once the exclusive domain of unproductive chatter, IM programs have gained enterprise credibility as vendors have added security, business features and corporate-directory integration.
In fact, IM systems have become multipurpose collaboration tools complete with chat rooms, conferencing, screen sharing, whiteboards, video and broadcasts. IM makes it easy to find who's in or out of their office or to touch base quickly to address minor problems or questions. Instant messaging can also offer significant long-distance phone savings. A plethora of enterprise-oriented IM vendors - including -- have emerged to meet the instant messaging needs of large and small businesses. In particular, vendors have focused strongly on the addition of security, compliance and industry standard technologies to the mix.
For many companies, setting up your own enterprise-ready IM solution makes sense. You archive all communications, and control security policies and service availability. An internal IM system also can work with your databases and authentication directories. New messaging standards XMPP and SIMPLE (SIP for Instant Messaging Presence Leveraging Extensions) offer further infrastructure integration, which is particularly important since the Sarbanes-Oxley Act added data retention to its rule book. Knowing what information your employees are communicating to those outside the company and being able to log and store that information may be vital.
A variety of vendors and service providers today offer Instant Messaging solutions, including: AOL, Jabber, Trillian, Verizon and others.
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