Instant messaging, whether it is MSN, Yahoo, AOL or any other, is a simple tool that allows quick interventions and fast responses. I have a tendency to use it all the time with my teams. It allows me to immediately have an answer to a question, without having to interrupt what the other is doing. It also allows me to trigger a conversation with a simple question, " are you available?". When I get that question, I typically respond with the telephone number of where I can be reached. It's an easy way for fast interactions, allowing each of us to continue our work without major interruptions. Unfortunately, our IT department, as many others I suppose, refuses the use of commercial Instant Messaging tools that allows collaboration across companies. There are apparently security risks of doing so. They now standardized us on Office Communicator, which is a nice product that integrates well with Outlook and shows automatically when you are available or not. But it does not allow access outside the firewall.
In that we are missing a major collaboration opportunity. Indeed, many of us are working with partners, our supply chain is reaching outside our own company. And it is with those people that we want and need to work. Do we need multiple instant messaging tools to achieve this? We shouldn't. Because there should not be a difference in the way we engage our best partners and our own resources. I still cannot understand why Microsoft and the others have not managed to solve the security issue. Or is there actually a security issue? Isn't it the will to be able to control what employees do with people outside the company?
The more our companies are going global, the more we need to work with people we only have electronic contact with. Making those relationships simple and easy, facilitating the communication, should be the number one goal of our IT departments. Unfortunately, that does not seem to be the case. What do you think about this?
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