Network Chat as a Tool for Corporate Communications?

rimmon asks: "I'd like to know what experience have you made with [network-enabled chatting programs] as tools to communicate with your boss, with your employees or your customers? Does your company utilize [Instant Messenger or IRC] as a communication tool (to communicate with customers, between employees and Pointy Haired Bosses? If you use or provide [chatting systems]: Is this technology an effective tool to communicate? What are the Pros and Cons? What type of chat technology do you use and what flavor of chat (open, moderated, etc.) works best for you?"

Comments

Reuters

[Jeremiah Cornelius]

Reuters sells a secured, auditable IM service for the Corporate/Financial Services market. Meets FDIC and SEC regulations. It's built on MSFT technology, but uses the Internet. Bloomburg has its own IM, but runs on their own services 'net.

More HERE...

Re:Reuters

[sql*kitten]

It's built on MSFT technology, but uses the Internet.

The "standalone" version uses the MSN GUI, but internally I believe it is SIP over HTTPS. The "real" version runs on a 3000 Xtra dealing workstation.

It can log everything to a database, so it's fully compliant for business use. In dealing rooms, unlogged communication is frowned upon, both by managers and staff. The logs are never looked at unless something comes to court, and they can save you from insider trading charges so there are no "geek privacy" concerns. Banks have recorded phone conversations for years.

Both IM and Email are good

[DrunkBastard]

We pass quite a bit of email around, but if your company is anything like mine, we tend to ignore email for long stretches at a time.

Instant Messaging is good, but invasive, but hey, you're at work, deal. We have a Jabber server setup, with fairly limited abilities for the average user, but some nice administrative features. Jabbers nice, it's free, and it's being continually developed.

Used to use IRC

[MerlynEmrys67]

Worked for a company that was radically attached to IRC (you weren't at work unless you were logged onto IRC)
Personal opinion, IRC (and typing in general) is way to low bandwidth to hold technical conversations on... What might be solved with a 10 minute phone call takes hours to discuss over IRC (especialy with the cross chat). Upside is the whole thing was logged and you could go on a company server and look through ALL of the IRC logs, the Con to that is absolutely nobody did that
The best use I would make of IRC would be
(nick) You there Pete
...
(pete) Hey... did you ring nick ?
(nick) Yeah, can I call you now ?
(pete) Sure
...
(phone heard ringing in the background)
Frankly I will never work on another distributed team if I can help it. I want to sit close enough to my immediate co-workers that I know if I can bother them (based on the music they are playing usually) and take it from there... having people across three timezones suck

Re:Used to use IRC

[sql*kitten]

Personal opinion, IRC (and typing in general) is way to low bandwidth to hold technical conversations on...

Yes and no. Chat systems are infinitely superior for anyone who needs to communicate what to type, especially if like most code or command line text is has case sensitivity or funny syntax. If someone wants a command or a code snippet, you can paste it to them while talking on the phone in real time.

I can't fucking stand it when people walk over and ask me something like that. What, you expect me to sit there reciting space-that, underscore-this, no that's in caps, that's in single quotes, open curly bracket, open square bracket, blah blah, close both brackets, etc? Anyone who wants code spoken aloud - which they won't remember anyway - is a fucking idiot and doesn't deserve helping.