There are a few clear signs that indicate when a new technology is catching on. The most obvious ones are: 1.) The users suddenly cannot seem to live without it, and 2.) The technology is being used far beyond its originally intended purpose. Email has passed that test many years ago and is still going strong.

An interesting post on Adam Gartenberg’s blog is suggesting that Instant Messaging and in this case Sametime specifically, is starting to grow into the same rank of becoming a highly pervasive, mission-critical enterprise application that people cannot live without. In his post, Adam talks about a large Sametime customer that is scheduling a software upgrade on a Saturday at midnight.

“In their words, they started five years ago with a perception in the company that “IM is a toy,” and now have to schedule upgrades not only for the weekend, but at midnight on the weekend, in order to minimize disruption to their business.”

Multiple comments on the post suggest that this is not an exception either.

“We also struggle to find a decent upgrade window. Our other infrastructure teams find Sametime invaluable to communicate during the weekend/nightime when they are carrying out their own upgrades and maintenance. With many working remotely from home it would be difficult for them to operate effectively without it. We utilise an IP sprayer so that we can ‘remove’ a server from the virtual IP at a time to minimise downtime.”

“I’ve had a couple of customers say that they can handle e-mail being down for a few hours, but Sametime…? No way.”

“I rarely hear people call real-time collaboration ‘a toy’ any more. I believe most people are realising the benefits.”

The following comment makes the case for my second test, by using Sametime beyond its originally intended purpose.

“I deployed Sametime for a Bank (not in the US) a few years ago, and they love it so much that sometimes when the branch offices can’t connect to the main iSeries (for Banking transactions) they almost make transactions using Sametime.”

Just as email has become a reliable (and costly) tool of convenience for file sharing, Sametime due to its real-time nature is starting to be used for other unintended and perhaps even unsanctioned transactions.

This puts pressure on corporate IT to manage IM just like any other mission-critical application in the enterprise, which includes H&A monitoring, usage reporting and policy enforcement. Is your company ready for this?

See also: Enterprise IM is growing up, Enterprise IM is growing up, cont.

Technorati Tags: Sametime, IM mission-critical, enterprise IM

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