Instant messaging goes corporate.

• Author: Swartz, Nikki
• Position: Up front: news, trends & analysis

If you don't know what "SUP" or "TTYL" means in instant-messaging (IM) speak, you will soon.

The technology, where "SUP" means "what's up" and "TTYL" means "talk to you later," is coming to an office near you.

Last spring, CIO magazine reported that a consortium of eight leading investment banks had extended an IM network to 2,000 institutional investor clients to allow easier communication among traders, brokers, and clients. During the summer, equities traders and clients also signed on.

Long considered a toy for teens, IM software now is beginning to invade the business world. According to a recent survey by Osterman Research, a technology research company, almost half of all U.S. and Canadian companies are currently using some form of IM. IM is faster than e-mail, delivering messages that pop up on your computer screen instantaneously, no matter what you're working on. Employees can use it to see if someone is in or to avoid time-wasting email and phone tag.

IM software typically shows a "buddy list" of friends and colleagues who are online at any given moment. By clicking on a name displayed in a small box on the computer screen, the user can type a message that pops onto the recipient's screen seconds after it is sent--and get one back just as quickly. IM conversations can be one-on-one or include several users.

According to data from independent research firm IDC, workplace use of business and consumer IM is expected to grow from 65.6 million users today to 260 million by 2007. Forrester Research said IM is finding users much faster than e-mail did when it was first introduced. In the last year alone, the number of instant messages has grown by more than 50 percent, so that nearly one-third of American adults are now "IM-ing" with their children, friends, clients, and colleagues.

But as more employees download popular IM tools, companies must recognize the immediate threat that these systems can pose to network security. IM can leave a multitude of unsecured doors open to unauthorized eyes that can gain access into desktops and, ultimately, into company computers at all levels.

The software's major stumbling blocks to widespread success in business are the need for secure systems and common standards. IM...