Springboard: IM the top collaboration tool among Asian firms

Instant messaging (IM) is the second most popular and widely used collaboration and communication tool in business enterprises across Asia Pacific after email, said Springboard Research.

According to a recent Springboard, enterprise instant messaging applications have started gaining attention from businesses, even though a majority of businesses in Asia Pacific use consumer instant messaging tools.

Findings of this report are based on Springboard's interviews with 469 CIOs, IT managers and business managers in over 400 large and SMB enterprises in Australia, New Zealand, China, India, Malaysia, Philippines and Singapore.

“IM is now recognized as an important communication tool and in many organizations, IM complements or even replaces relatively more expensive phone calls as a means of long distance intra and inter-organization communication,” said Balaka Baruah Aggarwal, senior research manager — Emerging Software at Springboard Research. “Consumer instant messaging tools are a key catalyst for organizations that go on to deploy more integrated and advanced communication and collaboration platforms.”

Enterprise IM gaining ground

Springboard added that IT vendors' increased focus on the enterprise instant messaging market in the recent months has emerged as a key market driver.

With the exception of China, multinational vendors like Microsoft, Yahoo and IBM dominate the instant messaging landscape in Asia Pacific, said the research firm. In China, local vendors like Tencent and mobile instant messaging provider PICA have a significant presence, Springboard noted.