Mobile email was the killer app for a while. And though it's
convenient -- some would say critical -- to keep up with messages
on the go, it isn't real-time.
Mobile instant messaging (IM), on the other hand, adds a level
of real-time communication to and from mobile devices. Today,
mobile management vendor Sybase iAnywhere released a mobile IM and
presence component to its Information Anywhere suite, an
enterprise-class tool that Sybase said brings mobile IM and
presence to mobile devices.
The Information Anywhere suite is a platform that helps
corporations leverage mobile email, collaboration, security, device
management and enterprise applications. The new IM client also
provides logging and routing capabilities to ensure compliance with
auditing policies.
Recent research from Gartner Inc. indicates that by 2010, 90% of
users with business email accounts will have IT-controlled IM
accounts. Although it's unclear how many of those accounts will be
mobile, Gartner said that "as IM traffic becomes increasingly
higher in volume and potentially higher in value, organizations
will need to adopt enterprise-class IM technologies, as well as IM
hygiene services, to ensure efficient, integrated, reliable and
secure use of IM technologies."
Senthil Krishnapillai, product manager for Sybase iAnywhere,
said the increased growth of IM -- roughly 65 million accounts
worldwide -- will ease the transition to mobile device IM and make
it a more acceptable practice in the enterprise. That, coupled with
the ability to see a colleague's presence, will better enable
real-time mobile communication.
According to Bryan Whitmarsh, product manager for Sybase
iAnywhere, the new IM component offers a platform that can
integrate with IBM Lotus Sametime IM, Microsoft Live Communication
Server, Jabber Wildfire and XCP, Reuters Messaging, and various
public IM clients to bring IM capabilities to mobile devices.
The IM client, Whitmarsh said, can run on most mobile platforms
and operating systems, including Palm, Pocket PC, Symbian,
BlackBerry and Java. It consists of one application that can access
any leading enterprise and public IM solutions.
It's a single client that gives access to multiple IM systems
and can transmit and receive presence information. Users can manage
contacts and notifications and can display message histories and
timestamps.
On the administrative side, the IM component can be deployed
with wizards through a user interface and is compatible with IM
hygiene, security and management tools from Akonix, FaceTime and
IMLogic. It can also be deployed over the air, and data is
encrypted end-to-end through 168-bit 3DES.
Jack Gold, president and founder of J.Gold Associates, a
Northborough, Mass.-based research and advisory firm, said mobile
IM is a technology that is building steam and will be increasingly
relevant to enterprise device users going forward.
"This is a moderately big issue, since many companies are
getting to the point where IM is becoming mission critical, just
like email," he said. "It's not quite there yet but will be in the
next one to two years."
Vendors such as BlackBerry maker Research In Motion Ltd. now
include IM on the device. Gold said, however, that most mobile IM
solutions haven't connected to Lotus Sametime or Microsoft Live
Communication Server. Instead, he said, most mobile IM clients are
consumer oriented, like AIM, Yahoo and MSN.
"Having IM in conjunction with email on a mobile device makes a
lot of sense," Gold said. "Add presence capability and you have the
ability to enhance communications to a mobile workforce beyond just
push email."
But with mobile email and short-message service (SMS), aka text
messaging, already quite prevalent in the enterprise, mobile IM
will have to carve out its own niche among users.
"I certainly believe that both IM and SMS serve a different user
than mobile email, [for example] for terse info and instructions in
near real time," said Current Analysis analyst Kathryn Weldon. "I
think there is actually a place for all three, and IM is rapidly
gaining favor as a corporate tool. As far as SMS is concerned, it's
already technically the killer app -- it generates more traffic and
revenues than corporate email. Both SMS and IM are especially good
for field communications, often replacing the old pager
paradigm."
Anthony Arroyo, MetLife's senior distributed technology
engineer, who manages mobile devices, said his company uses IM --
namely, IBM Sametime -- company-wide on workstations. As yet, it
hasn't deployed IM to the company's mobile environment because of
an incompatibility issue between BlackBerry and the security
archival solution MetLife uses. Since the archival solution is
required, the company can't deploy mobile IM until it finds a way
to work it out. Arroyo noted, however, that demand for mobile IM is
high.
Arroyo said he looked at Sybase iAnywhere's mobile IM tool. IBM,
he said, also offers a Sametime client for MetLife's devices.
"One of the benefits my users have said goes to being able to
see a person's presence – whether that use is working and
available, or in a meeting or just unavailable," he said. "SMS, MMS
and email do not provide that function. Plus, SMS and MMS are in
the clear, no encryption."
On a more personal note, however, Arroyo said he finds that IM
can be an intrusion.
"IM throws my working rhythm off," he said. "Like anything else,
you have to know when to shut it off."