IBM recently published a case study, showcasing how IBM is using instant messaging (IM) across the company as well as with BPs and customers, to improve communication and employee productivity. Internal usage analysis points out that IM surpassed e-mail as the preferred communication method within IBM. Amazing !
Adam Gartenberg wrote about IBM’s own experience with Lotus Sametime, specifically the MONEY point – we saved over $100M in travel and phone expenses because we use instant messaging to communicate. With other IBMers, with business partners, even with customers (Sametime Gateway). A local Israeli website also picked up the translated version of the story (Hebrew). The full case study (PDF) is available here: IBM CIO Office case study – use of Lotus Sametime.
I ask about instant messaging (IM) in every customer visit. In my next post I’ll comment about some of Lotus customers in Israel who are using Notes/Domino and Sametime – and can’t imagine a life without it.
IM is an old technology – ICQ were the first, then came MSN Messenger, Yahoo Messenger, Google Talk, Skype, Facebook Chat and others. All excellent services, but all public. Not secured, not behind the firewall, not enterprise ready. Lotus Sametime is 10 years old. It was born in 1996 by a small company in Israel called Ubique, and announced officially in 2000. With more than 100 million corporate users, Lotus Sametime is the leading corporate IM solution in the world. And instant messaging is a business tool, not something my kid plays with.
facebook announced today that this week, April 6th, is the week facebook chat will roll-out. This new ‘killer’ app was on the sights of many developers, analysts and bloggers, and I guess facebook developers got the same memo. “We’ll be rolling this (facebook chat) out slowly going forward, but fairly soon you’ll notice our new Chat bar at the bottom of your browser—no installation or assembly required. From this bar you can view your list of online friends and open conversations with any or all of them. There’s no need to setup a buddy list.” Couple of questions for the community/developers:
will you be able to multi-chat with several friends?
what advanced functionality will the chat have (screenshare, screengrab, file sharing)?
will the facebook chat API be available for developers (plugin for telephony for instance?)?
Now there’s another method to reach me, other than email/IM/Connections/Blog/facebook/ST-Demo/LinkedIn/phone/mobile – YellowBleeders group. Nathan Freeman of Lotus911 (and Alan Lepofsky and Adam Gartenberg) just wrote on how you can make your Lotus Sametime client or Notes 8 embed client ‘talk’ with the social software buffs already signed-in to BleedYellow.com.
What the future holds for virtual worlds? will Second Life continue to reign the scene in 2008 or will other environments be introduced? maybe There.com? or Active Worlds? what business applications will flourish? and what do we want VW to do for us? Many questions, not as many answers. Roo Reynolds and Ian Hughes have tried to answer these and other questions about virtual worlds in a recent podcast to Voices in Business blog.
Work to allow instant messaging between virtual worlds. I am “Nigel Paravane” in Second Life and I’m happy to provide that information on sutor.com or Facebook, for example, so that messages can be routed to me when I am in or out of that world.
I couldn’t agree more. As virtual worlds take center stage in 2008, the integration to real world will be crucial for survival. The opportunity is in that connections. One of the presentations at Unified Communication session at Lotusphere was given by Konrad Lagarde, Lotus Sametime development manager. Konrad showed some beta features currently being tested, that ‘may or may not be included in the future’.
Lagarde then showed his avatar running to a meeting in a virtual world. Once there, he uses a passcode to take control of the conferencing features in the room before putting up a slide show on a screen. The virtual room also was equipped with softphone voice communications and a whiteboard.
Already Lotus Sametime provides multiple services, other than the basic text chatting: integration with VoIP, integration with video conferencing systems, ability to add plugins (Eclipse based), chat outside the firewall (Sametime Gateway) and much more. Connection to Second Life is underway, and it won’t be long before you’ll be invited to a Sametime meeting, at a virtual place, with avatars representing the participants.
The high holidays in Israel are always a good time to catch up on some reading, inbox maintenance, etc. There are only 5-6 official national holidays, but if you combine all of them together, including half-days, you can have almost 14 days of vacation.. Add that to the fact that schools are on a break the entire period (14 days) – and pretty fast you’ll find yourself seating alone in your floor, lots of open space cubicles to choose from..
Since I’m leaving in couple of days to a much anticipated vacation in NYC (any comments about this museum?), I had a lot of time to go over some articles piling my Google Reader. There I came across ThreeBillion.com, a website operated by Paul MacGregor, who defines himself as “a man whose life has been dedicated to making money out of young people by giving them something they want.” The concept of the site is pretty simple: There are three billion people under twenty five on this planet… roughly half the world’s population. Pick one member of your family who is under twenty five. Ask them to name a cool brand. Now ask them to describe why it is cool. Did it make sense? Even if it did, would the other three billion under twenty fives say the same thing?
The site acts as an aggregator of content on the subject of teens’ marketing and lifestyle, and you can find articles, videos, studies, reports and much-much more. MTV and threebillion.com produced this video to explain why threebillion is important, and why Asia is super-important.
I also found this video, on the recent, (and somewhat) controversy Israeli ad campaign, aiming at improving tourism to the country.
Doing some searches in the site’s archives gave me this very interesting study, from USA Today, dated December 2006, about the gap in IM usage between teens and adults. The study provides the following stats:
Almost 75% of adults who do use IM still communicate with e-mail more often; Almost 75% of teens send instant messages more than e-mail.
More than half of the teens who use instant messages send more than 25 a day; 75% of adult users send fewer than 25 instant messages a day.
30% of teen users say they can’t imagine life without instant messaging.
When keeping up with a friend who is far away, teens are most likely to use instant messaging, while adults turn first to e-mail.
About 20% of teen IM users have used IM to ask for or accept a date; 16% have used it to break up with someone.
Wow !! 25 IM chats per day ! 75% of teens send more IM than emails ! 30% can’t imagine life without IM ! Do we need more proof that IM is the future of communication? I commenteda lot in the past about the future of IM in the corporate world, and some of the popular entry barriers to adopt corporate IM. Teens are the workers of tomorrow. Even today we see more university graduates, straight from campus, hired to consulting firms, venture capital and investment banking – they are used IM as a primary communication tool, and expect to find it in the workplace.
Again, before wrapping up, another short video, courtesy of SNL (BTW – I’m going to the NBC tour next Monday, the 8th – Hey, I’m a tourist on vacation, what can I say… ;-). Check out the host… LeBron James !
This is my personal blog. The postings here do not represent the thoughts, intentions, plans or strategies of my past employers or of my clients. It is solely my opinion.
IBM recently published a case study, showcasing how IBM is using instant messaging (IM) across the company as well as with BPs and customers, to improve communication and employee productivity. Internal usage analysis points out that IM surpassed e-mail as the preferred communication method within IBM. Amazing !
