Corporate IM blasted
ZD Net's Randall Black says corporate IM services make no sense. I understand why he thinks this is the case, because he looks at all the issues but doesn't see what the tools can actually do in the long run. Let's take the major points, shall we:
Because there is no interoperability in sight for AOL, MSN, and Yahoo, employees typically run all three clients to be able to communicate with contacts that are spread out across these networks.
First off, it is the opportunity to resolve this incompatibility that creates the major market opportunity. While each of the players will cordone off their networks, someone is going to bring all the systems together using Jabber or Jabber-based translator applications that allow AOL, MSN and Yahoo! client to join unified chats, use rich messaging and so fort. One of these players could blow the market open by offering this functionality, because then, instead of closed markets the battle becomes one of "share of experience." Feature-rich applications that solve bigger corporate problems, such as record-keeping related to customer communications, optimizing customer support and reducing travel related to work, can be worth a lot more than $30 a month.
AOL, MSN and Yahoo want you to pay from $24 to $30 per seat, per year, to have some additional features added to the clients. These features are geared to solving problems of employees using these clients to talk to customers. The problem is that customers are distributed across all three networks, making this a very expensive proposition.
Per above, this is the opportunity. Black also suggests that the specialized needs of specific vertical markets prevents one tool from doing it all. This is foderol of the highest order -- the basic functionality needed flows across market boundaries and can be shaped to each user interface as needed to address the specific needs of, say, a broker-dealer (where NASD and SEC compliance records are critical).
So who uses instant messaging to talk to clients anyway? Today it’s mostly brokers in the financial services industry that have a few “special” clients that must have real time access to their brokers. I suspect if I was trading thousands of dollars of stocks daily, I too may want to have real time access to my broker, but that is only one market.
Yes, it is only one market. And it is irrational to conceive of one market as the crucible of viability for corporate IM. It would be a waste of money to put brokers online for just anyone to tap on the virtual shoulder, but it does make sense to have IM for high-worth customers. Likewise, if you set up an IM plug-in that let, say, a Nordstrom personal shopper, service their best customers from the customer's desktop, so that when they need new shirts the shopper picks what is best and sends them along locally or via overnight delivery. Or, in the banking business, you could have a robust business in managing personal finances, especially debt consolidation, through IM, so that a debt service manager becomes part of the customer's life when they sign up ("You did put aside the $50 for the gas bill, right?" the service manager would message on the appropriate day of the month -- it could be automated and become a real-time conversation only if there was a problem).
There are real business problems to solve in the instant messaging space though. It seems that public instant messaging is here to stay, and in a big way. Along with it, come a slew of security problems for corporate networks. Everything from hacker vulnerabilities in the form of buffer overflows, to viruses, to worms, to leakage of confidential information, to legal liability because the guy in the next cubicle is chatting with his girlfriend.
Distributed work is a new animal. Our employers want us on the clock 24/7, so the fact that people are chatting with friends during the day isn't the end of productivity as we know it. As to the security issues, digital identity, which has lots of upside benefits, like the ability to log on from a variety of devices and stay in touch with exactly the information we want, is a big step toward preventing unauthorized access to corporate systems. From there, Black runs down lots of one-product or one-market tools. We need an omnibus approach to IM and archiving, not a series of one-off attacks on narrow markets. Then corporate IM would make a lot of sense and a lot of money.
Posted by Mitch Ratcliffe at November 25, 2002 09:21 AM | TrackBack