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Enterprise IM

Businesses adopted these systems “unofficially” as employees loaded the client software on their computers and found ways to overcome firewalls and other hurdles presented. Companies were concerned with the proliferation of these consumer communications platforms within their companies.

Unlike email, where people using Outlook can send and receive mail from AOL, Hotmail, and Yahoo!, IM remained proprietary. Some consumer users found that the best solution to this problem was to keep two or three IM applications running simultaneously. As a business tool, the situation was becoming more problematic. IT administrators fretted about unauthorized open ports on the corporate networks. Other IM issues were discovered.

In mid- to late ...