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The Radicati Group reports Instant Messaging market heating up. But there may be problems ahead for businesses…
According to The Radicati Group Inc's latest study ‘Instant Messaging Market, 2007-2011’ revenues in all sectors of the IM market are expected to grow from US$203mn in 2007, to US$530mn by 2011. The study divides the market into four distinct segments: Enterprise IM, Public IM, IM management/security, and IM clients. In the first segment IM adoption is being driven by a number of factors, including its immediacy of use, and the benefits of group collaboration. The report shows growing demand as major platforms, such as IBM Lotus Sametime and Microsoft LCS/OCS, make instant messaging a key component of their unified communications strategy.
But it’s not all plain IM sailing in the business world. As The Radicati Group itself notes the IM management/security segment will also see strong growth through 2011, driven by the ongoing need by organisations to secure their IM networks from an ever-increasing multitude of security threats.
IM and other enterprise IT security concerns may be exacerbated by the circumstance that many IT departments’ grip on control of enterprise applications and services is slipping because of consumerisation of the enterprise - the adoption of consumer technologies in the corporate environment. According to the recent Yankee Group report ‘Zen and the Art of Rogue Employee Management’ nearly 50% of employees feel more empowered than IT to control their personal IT environment, and this consumerisation trend will be a nightmare for IT departments because it will create major maintenance and support problems that will swiftly overwhelm IT resources.
The Yankee Group argues that enterprise IT that tries to ignore the adoption of these technologies in the workplace will potentially lead to a hazardous mix of secured and unsecured applications. Instead, IT must adopt a Zen-like approach to manage the technology and the rogue employee. Ceding control to end users via a internal customer care cooperative model reduces IT’s burden while improving customer satisfaction. The Zen support model is fundamentally different than most IT organizations today because it doesn’t seek to dictate policy and enforce standards, but rather set guidelines and steer users in the right direction.
Meantime, IM security and compliance specialist Akonix Systems has announced that its IM Security Center researchers tracked 20 malicious code attacks over IM networks during the month of July, bringing the total number of threats during 2007 to 226, a 78% increase over the same time period last year.
“We’ve seen decreases in IM attacks during the summer months each of the past three years, but this year the decrease has been less, leading to the alarming year-to-year jump in IM threats of 78%,” notes Don Montgomery, vp of marketing at Akonix. “Since most IT departments have secured e-mail but have left IM unprotected, it’s only natural that hackers are adjusting their sights to delivering malicious code through the path of least resistance. In corporate networks, that path of least resistance is IM.”
John Williamson
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