Phil Windley is talking about IM in the Enterprise and says something a bit stange:
I've been wanting an enterprise IM tool for some time, but couldn't justify the cost. Now, its part of Groupwise, so that helps the ROI considerably.
I'm wondering what the costs really are. Given that the software (Jabber) is free on both the client and server, what's left? Deployment? That's a one-time cost that's no higher than deploying any other softwrae. Training? IM software isn't terribly complex (compared to Word or Excel). Many already use IM at home thanks to AOL, Microsoft, or Yahoo. The less technically inclined can always ask their kids for help. :-)
We use it all the time at work, but we are Yahoo (or are we borg?). So we're eating our own dog food. It has been an indespensible tool for a long time. It sure beats the phone when you don't know if someone it working at home, at another desk, and so on. Heck, the even without the M part of IM, the presence services alone are quite handy. You can convey a lot of information with a 40-60 character "status" message like, "At lunch--back around 1pm" or "Fixing critical bugs---don't disturb!"
If I was still at my old job, I'm sure some of us would be using some sort of IM tool to keep track of each other. Come to think of it, we were already toying around with ICQ when I left 3 years ago. Amusingly, we had to resort to some funky tricks to make it work with the corporate firewall, but that wouldn't an issue today. We would just run our own (internal) Jabber server.
Damn. It would appear that DirecTV DSL (formerly Telocity) is going away.
We have some difficult news to share. With the dramatic change in the capital markets and the significant shift in the telecom operating environment, DIRECTV Broadband can no longer stand as an independent business.
That means my DSL goes away. I've gotta find someone else who will give me a static IP address and not rape me on the price. What fun.
It's raining and blowing like mad in the Bay Area today. I just had a 3.5 hour power outage. Yuck.
Oh, well. It could be worse. At least it doesn't snow here.