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The Case for Instant Messaging Appliances1. Introduction 2. Market Overview Today,
IT managers and service professionals are seeking new ways to increase
worker productivity, improve efficiency, and reduce costs through the
use of collaborative tools. Corporate pressures to reduce travel costs
and the need to reduce business process cycle times are forcing IT managers
to be more creative about the real-time collaboration tools they provide
as meeting substitutes. Instant messaging is considered part of a larger
base of “collaborative” applications that are used to enhance communications
and the sharing of information. 2.1 Benefits
of IM Indeed the value provided by instant messaging (IM) is no longer in question.
IM is here to stay, and like email, it will evolve into a necessary
“mission critical” application. IM is extremely beneficial within corporations
because it carries the immediacy of a phone call (without its disruptive
nature), and it eliminates long e-mail threads. Also, the presence information
(knowing who is online/offline and their status) associated with IM
is invaluable in quickly determining who is available for correspondence.
With IM, corporations also have the capability to tie together geographically
distributed workgroups, improve communication with business partners
and suppliers, improve customer support and relations, and facilitate
communications within the corporation. IM allows organizations to focus
on “contextual collaboration” strategies with their constituents by
allowing employees, customers, and partners to share all types of information
within such a collaborative environment. 2.2 Avoiding
Public IM Networks Sharing of essential information and collaboration are vital to organizational
efficiency, and just as corporations would never consider using public
free email services (Hotmail®, Yahoo®, etc.) as
a means of secure corporate communication, they should not consider
using public instant messaging networks.
The challenge, however, that remains for IT departments is how
to prevent users from uncontrolled use of public IM networks, and how
to successfully convert these users to enterprise-sponsored and managed
infrastructures. At the present, the range of products and services offered by various providers varies greatly across the board but there is definitely a clear need for a cost-effective and easily deployable IM solution for organizations of all sizes. The RapidIM line of appliances delivers on this promise. 2.3 Future of
IM Growth
of corporate IM presents significant opportunities for providers of
software and solutions. Companies that develop IM applications will
need to continue proving their value by providing upgrades, introducing
new product features, and maintaining compatibility with existing enterprise
systems. Over
time, IM will be embedded in applications, and it will function as a
far richer collaboration platform. Despite
e-mail’s current dominance as the communications and collaborative paradigm
for the Internet, the growth in corporate IM adoption will serve to
complement email usage over time. This adoption is expected to occur
at a pace that closely emulates that of corporate email, particularly
as firms begin to see the benefits offered by this new technology. 2.4 IM Servers
as Ubiquitous as Email Servers Eventually, instant messaging servers will be as ubiquitous as email servers are today. Corporations will eventually avoid the public IM networks altogether, or make public IM available to a select few who need to access consumers directly, such as employees within the technical support department. Almost all major corporations today have their own email servers in house or managed by a third party. IM servers will eventually follow the same migration path. Corporations will realize that having their own IM servers is vital to secure corporate communication. 3. Use of RapidIM
Appliances in Corporations The
RapidIM line of appliances can be used by businesses of all sizes to
accelerate and improve corporate communications. Law firms, brokerages, governmental agencies
can use corporate IM for:
Today, businesses are seeking cost-effective and simple-to-install-configure-and-maintain solutions to suite their IM needs. As a result, they are evaluating the deployment requirements of the RapidIM line of affordable Instant Messaging appliances. The following are a few deployment examples. 3.1 RapidIM Deployment
Example A
typical small business deployment of the RapidIM appliance is shown
in Figure 1. Through a web-based
administration interface, IT managers can configure the RapidIM appliance
and, among other options, grant/deny employee access to public Instant
Messaging networks (AOL, MSN, YAHOO, ICQ). The included RapidIM client
works seamlessly with the RapidIM appliance and can be easily deployed
to the Employee/Client computers. Currently,
the RapidIM client will run on all Windows based computers and a Java
version will be released shortly.
Figure
2 shows a network diagram for a larger organization that requires a
distributed Instant Messaging network and more refined control over
their users. As shown in Figure
2, each department (IT, HR, Engineering) has their own RapidIM appliance.
This method has two distinct advantages: appliance and network redundancy
and user control. By
installing a RapidIM appliance for each department, appliance and network
redundancy is achieved because a single failure will not hamper corporate-wide
Instant Messaging. For example, in an unforeseen event when the IT department
loses its Internet connection, employees within the IT department will
still be able to send instant messages to one another. Also, in a rare event when the Instant Messaging
appliance fails to function, either from a power outage or malfunction,
other departments within the organization can still communicate via
IM. Had there been a central IM server connection
for all employees, a power failure, network outage or hardware failure
would certainly have crippled the organization’s ability to communicate,
which could lead to significant financial loss. The second advantage of the network architecture presented in Figure 2 is that a finer method of user control can be exercised by the organization. For example, the IT department may have access to the public IM networks in order to trouble-shoot customer problems. However, the HR department may be restricted from such access and this would be reflected in the configuration of the user policies of the respective appliance.
Figure 2. Deployment of RapidIM appliances within an organization. 3.2 Portals/Web
Sites and ISPs The
RapidIM appliances can be deployed by online web portals and affinity
websites that wish to build a community by providing a branded Instant
Messaging client for their users. Because of the cost-effectiveness of the RapidIM line of appliances,
even small affinity portals can realize significant value from offering
a private IM network, while maintaining strict user controls that can
be changed at will by the portal or website.
With RapidIM, consumer portals and sites also have the choice
of offering integration with the major public IM Networks (AIM, MSN,
Yahoo, and ICQ), thus avoiding switching costs to their customers. With the RapidIM appliance, ISPs can now offer their customers a value added service above and beyond the connection. And with RapidIM’s client interface, ISPs have the choice of a private label IM client or an all-in-one desktop portal. 4. Summary Corporate Instant Messaging is poised for explosive growth in the next several years. Corporate users are beginning to realize the full benefits of IM and are making more use of Instant Messages in their daily routine. IT managers are concerned that the proliferation of public IM clients within the organization could open the corporate network to hackers and almost all agree that they would like to keep private instant messages between co-workers out of the public networks. The RapidIM line of appliances empowers an organization to realize the full benefits of Instant Messaging while maintaining a system of strict control on both the usage and deployment of IM infrastructure. |
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Copyright 2002. |
