Gartner Predicts Instant Messaging Will Be De Facto Tool for Voice, Video and Text Chat by The End of 2011

'Presence' technologies in the enterprise will go far beyond current capabilities of instant messaging

Egham, UK, June 21, 2007 —

For many knowledge workers, instant messaging (IM) is as critical as having access to a telephone or to e-mail and enterprises that haven’t already done so should start incorporating IM into their critical business processes immediately, Gartner said today.  Gartner predicts that by the end of 2011, IM will be the de facto tool for voice, video and text chat with 95 percent of workers in leading global organisations using it as their primary interface for real-time communications by 2013.  The worldwide market for enterprise IM is forecast to grow from $267 million in 2005 to $688 million in 2010.

Instant messaging systems have moved from the fringe to become a key part of an enterprise’s collaboration infrastructure and are increasingly displacing existing forms of communications from ad hoc telephone calls and emails to pre-planned meetings and video conferences.  Enterprises are beginning to invest in IM and associated technologies accordingly.   “Although consumer IM use has been predominant in business, we expect penetration levels for enterprise grade IM to rise from around 25 percent currently to nearly 100 percent by the end of the decade,” said David Mario Smith, research analyst at Gartner. 

Gartner advocates the use of enterprise grade IM from vendors including IBM and Microsoft to ensure that IM traffic is secure behind the firewall.  Connections with external partners or customers via federation to public service IM such as AOL/AIM, Yahoo or MSN, should be protected by the use of IM hygiene or security services provided by vendors such as Facetime, Akonix or Symantec/IMLogic.

Just as the deployment of email in corporations in the early 1990s proved an unparalleled success for businesses, analysts said that a similar phenomenon is occurring with IM.  “The business benefits that IM can bring are considerable,” added Mr Smith.  “The ability to connect people in disparate locations by text, voice and video in one application is incredibly powerful and is equally well suited to an informal ‘water cooler’ atmosphere as well as more formal group communications.”  Mr Smith also said that IM is increasingly being used as a vehicle for rapidly disseminating critical information to the entire enterprise, groups of users or individuals in cases such as natural catastrophes, health issues, network outages or schedule changes. In some cases, the IM network remains operational when phone or e-mail systems are down.  He highlighted IM’s growing importance to customer relations departments and call centres where IM is being used to foster closer relationships by providing faster and easier access to the most relevant part of the organisation. 

Although IM is displacing existing communications channels, such as email, in many instances, Mr Smith is clear that there is no danger of it actually replacing email in the enterprise outright. “Rather than replacing email, IM will augment and complement the use of email,” he said.  “Email is an excellent and unique tool that has, in recent years, been misused and above all overused.  It was never intended for real-time, snappy communications but for the conveyance of more detailed, less transitory content.  IM excels at real-time communication and this why it sits so happily alongside email at the core of the communications and collaboration architecture of the future.” 

Where email still has an advantage over IM is when it comes to archiving.  At present vendors such as IBM and Microsoft allow server side archiving of IM records for compliance. However, the issue is that users can save their text chat information at the client side and this could be tampered with. Until this issue is effectively resolved it could lead to huge legal headaches.  Crucial to the future success of enterprise IM therefore will be determining how to effectively capture IM records and how to develop a concrete IM policy.  Most organisations have developed similar policies for email on both of these issues in recent years.

Email and IM are so closely allied in the minds of many enterprises that Gartner foresees that the vast majority will chose IM systems that complement their emails systems.  According to Mr Smith, this is leading to tremendous consolidation in the marketplace.  “Stand-alone enterprise vendors face increasing pressure from strategic platform vendors like IBM and Microsoft, which are positioned to leverage their email and collaboration infrastructures to dominate the enterprise IM Market.  What we are now seeing from these players is the morphing of the IM system into more than it was originally intended for, that is a fully converged unified communications platform with presence at its centre.”

Presence technology allows people to establish the availability of others for real-time communications regardless of their location.  It also enables users to cut through desktop clutter, resulting in immediate responses. This has proved invaluable in time-sensitive business processes such as customer service, regulatory issues, crisis management and problem resolution.  “What makes IM work has always been presence technology, and business users are beginning to see the benefit of using presence across multiple applications,” said Mr Smith.  “To-date, the options for integrating presence with other applications have been limited.  What organisations need is a real-time collaboration architecture, which makes presence information available beyond the confines of an IM application.” 

As a result, Gartner predicts that by 2012, presence technology will be offered independently of IM and email products.  Mr Smith urged vendors and enterprises alike to recognise this and develop a real-time architecture with presence as the key ingredient. “The IM client is becoming the launch pad for many types of communications channels and services,” he concluded.  “Presence will extend its influence beyond IM to become an essential source of innovation for enterprise applications of the future.”

 

Contacts:


Laurence Goasduff
Gartner
+ 44 1784 267 195
laurence.goasduff@gartner.com

Carina Forsling
Gartner
+46 8 624 6324
carina.forsling@gartner.com


About Gartner:
Gartner, Inc. (NYSE: IT) is the world's leading information technology research and advisory company. Gartner delivers the technology-related insight necessary for its clients to make the right decisions, every day. From CIOs and senior IT leaders in corporations and government agencies, to business leaders in high-tech and telecom enterprises and professional services firms, to technology investors, Gartner is the indispensable partner to 60,000 clients in 10,000 distinct organizations. Through the resources of Gartner Research, Gartner Consulting and Gartner Events, Gartner works with every client to research, analyze and interpret the business of IT within the context of their individual role. Founded in 1979, Gartner is headquartered in Stamford, Connecticut, U.S.A., and has 4,000 associates, including 1,200 research analysts and consultants in 80 countries. For more information, visit www.gartner.com.