IM accounts soar to 867 million

Use of instant messaging among consumers and businesses continues to increase, and is expected to drive the market from 867 million accounts in 2005 to approximately 1.2 billion in 2009, analysts predicted today.

According to a survey of IM use within 523 organisations worldwide conducted by Radicati Group, the majority of IM traffic in 2005 exists on public networks (12.5 billion messages sent per day), where the technology first took hold.

The report divides the IM market into public IM networks, enterprise IM vendors and IM management vendors.

IM management is expected to become an increasingly integral part of the market, as enterprises that currently rely on public IM networks look to management vendors for security against the rising onslaught of worms and viruses carried by IM traffic.

Archiving and logging of IM to meet the increasingly stringent demands of corporate compliance regulations is also expected to boost demand for management tools, according to Radicati Group.