The Global Gen World

Enterprise Instant Messaging (EIM) was created in response to the demand for business-grade Instant Messaging (IM). There was also the need to ensure security and legal compliance as millions of consumer IM accounts are being used by employees of companies and organizations for business purposes. Lotus software initially launched the IBM Lotus some time in 1998 with Microsoft following suit with its Microsoft Exchange. Succeeding developments consisted of the Microsoft Office Live Communications Server and the Office Communications Server 2007.

IBM Lotus and Microsoft have both introduced federation between their EIM systems and some of the public IM networks so that a single interface may be used by employees to their internal EIM system and their AOL, MSN and Yahoo! Contacts. There are bound to be risks and liabilities for companies without effective management and support for IM use, thus the need to consider the aspect of security.