Mitch Radcliffe has a nice blurb about why corporate IM makes sense; this was in response to an article published on ZDNet calling into question whether Enterprise IM makes any sense at all.
I agree with Mitch, though differ a bit in terms of how this will take place. The notion of adding real-time communications to Internet applications makes tons of sense, but it doesn't mean that it's all going to happen through consumer or corporate IM clients. As Mitch notes, lots of communications will be ad hoc and context-based -- shopping assistant, help with a form in an online insurance site, other forms of customer interaction -- and for that the communications should be integrated into the application user interface directly.
This is precisely the model we've been pursuing with Flash Communication Server MX, where applications integrate real-time collaboration and rich media messaging (text/audio/video) into vertical solutions.
I do agree, though, that having an IM Switch in the network or on servers, which these custom applications can talk to and use, across IM networks, makes lots of sense. I hope we see it soon.
1:11:02 PM 
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