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The global market for enterprise instant messaging will reach $688 million in 2010, up from $267 million in 2005 according to Gartner.

The firm estimates that IM will overtake voice, video and text chat for workers by 2011 and that 95 percent of workers in top global companies would make it their primary application for real-time communications by 2013.

E-mail will still have a role in communications because of its archiving capabilities. IM will be used along with e-mail instead of replacing it.

David Mario Smith of Gartner said, "Although consumer IM use has been predominant in business, we expect penetration levels for enterprise grade IM to rise from around 25% currently to nearly 100% by the end of the decade."