mal instant messaging strategy. "Most of the IMing at work is done through the big-brand instant messaging serv- ices," says Kalehoff. Osterman notes that enterprise adoption of instant mes- saging technology is lagging far behind employee demand. "Only about 30 percent of companies have established a corporate standard for IM," Osterman says. On the other hand, he notes, about 85 percent of companies have some level of instant messaging activity. E-MAIL LEADS TO INSTANT MESSAGING Capitalizing on the fact that their products already contain an instant messaging-type technology, conferencing and collaboration software vendors such as Groove Networks and Lotus Software are also entering the field. Lotus, which sells Sametime collaboration software, has already gained a solid foothold in the enterprise-grade instant messaging market. "Among organiza- tions that have actually established a standard, about 60 percent have estab- lished Sametime as the standard," says Osterman. Unlike consumer instant messaging software, Sametime provides several enterprise-class management and security features, such as integration with corporate directories and encryption. Also entering the field are numerous pure-play instant messaging startups, such as Bantu, Ikimbo, and Jabber. These companies hope to beat the competition with instant messaging multimedia messaging tools that span mul- tiple platforms. The thought of employees flinging unencrypted messages through public networks, however, is enough to give almost any CIO the willies. The idea that external instant messaging senders may be able to toss viruses and other types of destructive code into an enterprise is at least equally chilling. Although most enterprise-grade instant messaging softwares offer some type of security mechanism, primarily encryption, many consumer-grade products-the kind brought in by employees without the IT department's knowledge-don't. "One of the problems with traditional consumer-grade clients is that they can open a hole in the firewall," says Ost