 a better job of helping end- users manage e-mail and use other collaborative tools in conjunction with e-mail," says Mark Levitt, research vice president for collaborative computing at IDC. The value of instant messaging's immediacy and presence awareness is being noticed more widely in the workplace. However, instant messaging is becoming more similar to e-mail in terms of corporate requirements for track- ing and archiving of messages. Long favored by gossipy teenagers, instant messaging is now donning a suit and showing up for work. The software, popularized by programs such as AOL Instant Messenger, Microsoft's MSN Messenger, Yahoo Messenger, ICQ, and IRC, is being adopted-albeit often reluctantly-by a rapidly growing number of enterprises. "I think you're going to see IM use grow much faster than e-mail use," says Michael Osterman, president of Osterman Research, a tech- nology research company in Black Diamond, Washington. ComScore Networks, a Reston, Virginia-based audience ratings company, estimates that the number of work-based instant messaging users rose 10 percent during the first six months of 2002, reaching 17.4 million active users. "The same services that people have early-on adopted for use at home, mainly for social reasons, are now catching on at work," says Max Kalehoff, a senior manager at ComScore. Unlike e-mail, instant messaging can deliver messages directly to a recipi- ent's desktop, where it's likely to receive immediate attention. The technology can also be used for customer support and to simultaneously send messages to dozens or even thousands of users. With the arrival of instant messaging software into the business mainstream, many CIOs are concerned that instant messaging will open yet another door through which hackers can crawl. They also worry that instant messaging will sap productivity. Despite the questions, instant messaging's popularity has drawn a variety of vendors into the field, with easily downloadable tools often appearing at enterprises that have yet to adopt a for