A few weeks ago, I wrote:

While [free IM tools] suits my needs pretty well on base functionality, I'd hesitate before endorsing it as a corporate tool.  In addition to the need protect the contents of message with encryption, a coporate tool needs:

• the ability to use the company's LDAP directory for accounts and passwords
• better methods of finding who's available
• logging and monitoring of messages
• filtering capabilites for viruses

A recent article in ZD Net News, talks about the issues for corporations who want to use IM in the workplace and for IM providers like Yahoo! and AOL. 

I'd like our customer support (for internal IT customers) to offer IM as an alternative to the phone for people with support problems.  We'd need logging and monitoring capabilities for that to be viable.  And I'm not about to pay a $50/head licensing cost for a commercial IM solution---that's $1M.  An IM product is not worth $1M to us.   Looks like its time to spend some time playing with Jabber.