As the race to achieve corporate productivity at the global level forges ahead and new tools to help us perform and deliver on a higher plain continue to emerge on the horizon, instant messengers designed for workplace communication are gradually receiving the attention they truly deserve.
Instant messengers, also known as instant office messengers, office instant messengers and business messengers, belong to a unique class of office productivity applications that enable members of a workforce to connect with each other both individually and collectively. The communication is facilitated using text-based live chat much like Google’s GTalk, AOL Instant Messenger, or Yahoo Messenger with a major difference. These first generation instant messengers are designed largely for personal and informal one-to-one communication. Instant messengers specially made for enterprises, on the other hand, are loaded with a wide spectrum of features and attributes specifically tailored for workplace communication some of which include the ability to:
- Connect employees using login and password credentials across geographies
- Transfer files including large multimedia files and folders
- Function seamlessly without LAN or WAN dependencies by connecting directly through the Internet
- Send and receive bite-sized content in the form of small files and instructions using the sticky note feature
- Conduct online conferences and meetings
- Check the status of your colleagues (online versus offline)
- Supplement chat messages with smileys and emoticons
- Generate, distribute and archive chat transcripts in order to maintain records and preserve paper trails
- And we have kept the best for the last!
Workplace Communication in a fully Secure and Encrypted environment
Instant messengers for enterprises allow employees within an organization to communicate freely without any privacy concerns in a fully safe and secure environment regardless of the size of the organization. This is accomplished using 256 bit SSL cryptology similar to what banks, payment gateways, brokerage houses and insurance companies deploy to protect their data privacy. All your workplace communication is encrypted in both directions while in transit and cannot be decoded even if intercepted. Thus corporate intelligence is fully protected behind the corporate firewall.
Security-enabled File Transfers
256 bit SSL encryption is also extended to files that are transferred and shared among employees very similar to the way attachments are transmitted across the enterprise. Your employees and colleagues can both send and receive Excel sheets, charts, graphs, confidential employee performance reports and multimedia files without any fear of intrusion or data compromise. Some messengers even allow you to set permissions and access levels in such a way that admins are unable to either examine or intercept data being shared through the secure file transfer protocol.
SSL Certificate Innovations
SSL certificate providers such as VeriSign, Comodo and others constantly strive to innovate through research and the acquisition of technology milestones. These improvements are reflected instantly in the quality and level of encryption delivered by these messengers who rely, in part, on these services to deliver SSL cryptology.
Enhanced Security in the Cloud
Many of the subscription-based service providers for these messengers use the cloud to deliver messaging services to their clients. Since both the application and the associated data reside in the cloud, it is protected with an added layer of data security that is specific to the cloud. Hence the 360 degree security blanket, which many subscription-based business messenger services receive, is unparalleled. Add to the mix the other benefits of the cloud such as resilience, redundancy and multi-level disaster recovery, and you have a truly professional productivity tool that can transcend all your expectations in the enterprise communication realm.