Yahoo! Dissolves Enterprise IM
Yahoo! has finally crumbled and is shuttering its Enterprise IM operations. There is hardly cause for alarm, however. For the most part, the writing was on the walls from the beginning. News.com notes:
In an informal interview earlier this week, Yahoo's Chief Information Officer Lars Rabbe said the enterprise instant messenger was shelved, because Yahoo is largely a consumer company and not structured to take on the kind of support tasks and other responsibilities that come with selling corporate software.
The move will consolidate Yahoo's consumer and enterprise products into one product package.
Business IM is still alive and kicking. In many ways, it serves the industry better to have solutions designed from the bottom up for their industry than to try and retrofit a widely deployed system to a narrow focus. Ironically, all the convergence makes it hard to tell just yet what form of IM will dominate, the one that currently rules, or some new enterprise-class version.