By IT-Observer Staff
Friday, 30 September 2005 12:21 EST

A new research has shown that while businesses believe that Instant Messaging improves overall communication, over two thirds are concerned about the security threats it poses to the enterprise.

"Instant messaging's greatest benefit is also its greatest danger if allowed to propagate ungoverned in the enterprise. Its ability to put business people in touch with each other more quickly than any other medium also means that those who wish us harm can accomplish their villainy with unprecedented, breathtaking speed,” said Jim Moffatt, of the eema IM Specialist Group.

The research also revealed that over 50 percent of companies are using IM for business application, and 75 percent said they had not yet settled on one or more products as an IM standard.

Commenting on this result, Mike Osterman, president of Osterman Research, said, “To date IM’s huge success has been thanks to the viral uptake of the application. We fully expect to see this figure climb significantly as organisations roll out their own enterprise-grade IM systems and/or provide enterprise features to the current base of IM clients.”

The research, conducted by Osterman Research across North America, Europe and Australia, targeted small, medium and large businesses. The industries surveyed covered a wide range and were not limited to any particular field.