Why all the fuss about AOL and Yahoo exiting the enterprise IM market? Some of the coverage that I've read during my two weeks of parental leave make it sound as though the "sky is falling" on enterprise IM. That's not how I see it. Rather, AOL and Yahoo had very few natural advantages to leverage in attacking the enterprise IM market, and now they've recognized that for themselves, they've pulled out.
In June 2002, when AOL was planning its enterprise IM offerings, I wrote an Insight Bulletin (subscription required) for Ferris Research that predicted failure, because:
- AOL would have to focus on a different "customer". The "customer" for its free consumer-grade IM offering is "average Joe", who can download the client at will, install it, and IM on. For its enterprise-grade offering (which included an onsite server), the customer would have to change to be the corporate IT department. Big change.
- Most enterprises will select the IM server offerings from their email messaging vendor. If you're a Microsoft Exchange shop, you'll most likely go with Exchange IM or Live Communications Server. If you're a Lotus shop, Sametime is the product. Once those two players take their share of the market, there isn't much left, and for what is left, AOL didn't have the reputation, history, or enterprise sales force to make a dent in the market.
- No share of the developer mindset. That's very important in the enterprise market, because it's the developers who will do the integration of IM capabilities into other business applications.
There were other points too, but the three above stand out in my mind as the key issues limiting AOL's (and Yahoo!'s) options in the enterprise IM market.
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