Historically, IM has been the privilege of
very large, distributed enterprise organisations that use it to
support virtual teams.
More recently, IM has also entered the small
to medium space, introduced through the ‘back door’ by workers with
hotmail accounts (‘grey IT’). CIOs have shifted their attitude from
a grudging acceptance of IM to its recognition as a vital
collaborative business tool.
IM works in real-time. It is instant,
interactive and natural for people to use, making it the preferred
starting point for all business communications.
The key to legitimising IM for business
purposes is to run it within a secure, federated services model –
where secure access to individuals can be provided across
organisational boundaries, linking them together as a virtual
team.
Logicalis consultants are experienced in the
delivery of solutions from the three main Instant Messaging (IM)
vendors: Microsoft Office Communications Server (OCS), Cisco
Unified Presence Server (CUPS) and IBM Lotus Sametime.