Don't shoot the messenger

Instant messaging is being treated with the same suspicion that greeted the arrival of email, but it could prove to be a vital collaboration tool.

When I was a cub reporter working at Computing in the early 1990s, email was just beginning to trickle into the workplace.

Back then, many employees saw it as a novel toy and used it mainly to communicate information that they didn't want other people to hear.

At the time, I interviewed several companies that had actually banned email because they felt it was a threat to productivity. The reason? Because some managers complained that typing an email and finishing an Excel spreadsheet could look exactly the same from a distance.

The far-reaching business benefits were overlooked, probably until the same managers who had banned email began to realise that they could not do without it in either their personal or professional lives.

These days many companies would struggle to survive without email. Some companies have drawn up human resources and company policies that outline acceptable email use.

Although there are still problems with email, the main one being spam, it is now seen as a must-have business communication tool for workers, rather than a plaything.

Even a certain amount of personal use is tolerated as long as it falls within company guidelines.

Over the past few years, a new electronic communication tool has emerged that, if used correctly, could threaten email.

Called instant messaging, it has its roots in the old network chat clients. But many companies prefer to block or ban it for the same reasons put forward by early opponents of email.

The fear is that it might cause productivity loss, liability through information leakage, misuse or loss of control.

But if the same policies applied to email could be applied to instant messaging, the technology could prove to be a vital collaboration tool, especially for web services.