Public or Private IM Debate - #64

Further to blog entry #63, that made a strong statement about disconnecting from public IM, here is a debate that discusses private versus public IM in an enterprise and goes into more depth about a broad IM strategy. One camp says public IM is so prolific you cannot exclude it from your corporate strategy and the other camp says cut it off!

Did you know that IM is so pervasive in businesses that sources for this story estimate anywhere from 60 to 360 million corporate IM users in 85-90 percent of enterprises use the popular messaging technology and yet 50-70 percent of enterprises haven't established formal policies for IM use?

Youd better believe that best practices for IM are a hot topic right now!

Another very recent (today) controversial continuation of the public versus private corporate IM debate is here and is definately worth a read http://www.securitypipeline.com/164300036

The message? Just because 100M people using public IM are wrong, doesnt mean that you have to incorporate it into your corporate strategy. In other words, if everyone is jumping over the cliff like lemmings does that mean you should follow them?

Either way action is called for now, whether you choose to use public IM, private IM or a mixture of both.