The content of Yahoo's alerts pops up in message windows on a user's desktop and is inserted into the appropriate tabbed pages in the offline Yahoo Messenger client. Microsoft is doing something very similar, using its MSN Messenger Service to integrate its portal-based HotMail Web mail offering more tightly with its Outlook Express messaging client. It's only a matter of time before we see instant messaging enter the mainstream of corporate networking as a widespread application and a middleware service. Or instant messaging may enter in the form of intranet and extranet portals that include collaboration, transaction and publishing services. Indeed, instant messaging has already entered the corporate world through much the same grass-roots process by which individual users brought personal computers, cellular phones and the Web into the corporate world.
Users play with it on the side, come to depend on it and demand it from their companies.
Instant messaging is too young a technology and hasn't decided what it wants to be when it grows up. But that shouldn't stop enterprises from thinking ahead to the day, perhaps two to three years from now, when it matures into an enterprise-grade service. Feedback Tell us your thoughts on this article or the issues raised in it. When you click Submit, you'll be taken back to this article. Feedback Tell us your thoughts on this article or the issues it raises.