WASHINGTON - When Adm. Gerald Hoewing took the aircraft carrier USS John C. Stennis to the Pacific Ocean for a six-month tour of duty last year, he followed an old Navy custom known as the fireside chat. Each night after dinner, Hoewing debriefed the commanding officers of the ships in his battle group.
But while Hoewing honored the Navy tradition, he did it in a nontraditional way. Instead of talking by radio, as commanders have done for decades, the admiral and his captains sat at personal computers and conducted their conversations using Lotus instant-messaging software running over an encrypted satellite link. Navy brass were so impressed that they ordered similar setups for every ship at sea. By this summer, everyone from ensigns to admirals will be using instant messaging to communicate within ships, across the Navy and even back to the Pentagon in Washington.
"Instant messaging has allowed us to keep our crew members on the same page at the same time," says Lt. Cmdr. Mike Houston, who oversees the communications program. "Lives are at stake in real time, and we're seeing a new level of communication and readiness."
Not long ago, instant messaging was the communications mode of choice for chatty teenagers. Now the simple application that allows real-time exchange of short text messages has found more grown-up pursuits in government and corporate offices. But instant messaging won't become a truly mass medium until it clears one hurdle: compatibility. Right now, there is no standard for instant messaging. And with business use on the rise, the industry and regulators are under increasing pressure to solve this problem.
Dozens of companies offer instant messaging, and they all speak different languages. America Online, Microsoft (MSFT) and Yahoo (YHOO) are the free-messaging leaders; just to complicate matters, AOL has two systems, AOL Instant Messenger and ICQ - and they're incompatible. Along with Cisco (CSCO) Systems and Lotus, Microsoft also sells more complex systems for corporate use.
Small businesses tend to use the free services to converse with employees, customers and suppliers. At political consulting firm Mindshare Internet Campaigns in Washington, CTO Shabbir Safdar uses ICQ to communicate with his company's dozen employees and their clients. "You get to drop all the time-consuming protocols of telephone conversations without breaking the politeness barrier," he says.
Larger enterprises, like the Navy, are relying on the bigger corporate programs that give them greater control over users and tighter security to keep out eavesdroppers. Retailer Lands' End (LE) has fitted its Web site with browser-based messaging from Cisco to let customers chat directly with company reps.
