DumberDrummer

Talk about irony. Watchers of the instant-messaging business have been lamenting the lack of real interoperability between the major-player systems -- namely, Microsoft's (Nasdaq: MSFT) MSN Messenger, Time Warner's (NYSE: TWX) AOL Instant Messenger, and Yahoo! (Nasdaq: YAHOO) Messenger -- for years. In short, users of the different systems couldn't truly "talk" to each other across company lines, requiring them to sign up for multiple services for best results.

This has been the case for ages, but the big players have never really taken meaningful steps to partner. Yet yesterday, we had Microsoft "coming around" in a press release, citing a Forrester analyst's recent comment that (in Microsoft's words):

... [i]nterest in IM for business use -- or enterprise IM (EIM) -- is running high. But many potential buyers are scaling back or postponing their planned investment as they run into one core question: Where's the return on investment? Without interoperability between networks -- including both public and private IM networks -- firms can only build half-baked versions of the high-value apps that will deliver the best ROI for EIM.

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Living with Louie dog's the only way to stay sane
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... and with those words so begins my lifetime of longing for the devil's warm embrace