For organizations seeking prescriptive guidance for driving business advantage from instant messaging applications, this white paper provides a best practices overview for effectively managing the risks and costs associated with the corporate use of IM.

Instant Messaging (IM) use in the enterprise has exploded and is now seen as a valuable business communications tool. Across companies of all sizes, the benefits of real-time communications and presence awareness are changing the way people communicate with colleagues, customers and partners. The Radicati Group estimates that 85% of all enterprises in North America are reporting IM use, with over 387 million IM users worldwide sending 13.8 billion IM messages per day.


The majority of these IM messages are sent over public networks under the radar of the enterprise IT organization and without the security and compliance tools required to mitigate the risks of this new communications tool. In fact, studies estimate that while 60% of organizations monitor and secure email, 90% of organizations lack any form of IT sanction or control for IM. With both the Gartner Group and IDC predicting continued increases in business IM usage, including increasing levels of IM growth at the expense of email usage, the risks of unmanaged IM are only increasing.