TMCNet News has an article covering findings of a survey on the use of IM in the enterprise. According to their results, IM use, and in particular enterprise IM use, is pretty prevalent. What I found interesting in the more detailed results on their site is that in North America, the larger you go in the 100-1000 employee size range, the more you see people saying that IM isn’t valuable as a tool (a trend not really duplicated outside of North America.)
With more than 700 responses coming in from all Global Regions, the findings show that for North American-headquartered companies, 68% are using Instant Messaging of one sort or another in their businesses. In EMEA, APAC and CALA, the number is even higher, with 77% of enterprises reporting use of IM for business purposes.
Of the companies worldwide that are utilizing Instant Messaging, use of Enterprise-grade IM heavily outstrips use of Public IM services by a 3-to-1 margin.
For companies using Enterprise IM, company-wide deployments are clearly the norm, with 71% of companies in all Global Regions choosing to make the application available to all end-users rather than select employees in specific groups or job functions.
Link: TMCNet: Enterprises Split on Business Value of Instant Messaging
Adam Gartenberg 