Talk about instant messaging in the enterprise environment and it really comes down to two big players: Microsoft, with Live Communications Server, and IBM, with Lotus Sametime.

LCS certainly gets plenty of attention in the media, but whatever happened to SameTime?

On paper, Sametime 7.5.1 - the latest version - boasts an impressive array of features. There's server support for Linux machines and desktop client support for Apple Macs. IM sessions can be escalated to video conversations. Perhaps most significantly, there's out-of-the-box integration with Microsoft products so that it's possible to launch Sametime functionality - like instant messaging, voice or video chat and Web conferencing - from inside Office and Outlook. Presence status can also be updated automatically based on appointments in Outlook's (or indeed, Lotus Notes') calendar.

But how attractive is the product really? There's a problem right from the start, and that's the Lotus brand. IBM clearly believes it's a diamond in the rough that can be fashioned in to something really, really valuable. And maybe in the longer run this will prove to be true. But for many, as things stand, the Lotus brand conjures up the image of an aging leviathan: something big and ponderous, and certainly not at the cutting edge of technology. There's a lot of decision makers out there who see the name Lotus and pull down the shutters: "no thank you, we don't use Lotus software here."

Fair? Probably not.

"Lotus kind of lost heart a few years ago, but now since the release of Notes 8.0 it has rung some major changes," says Nick Shelness, senior analyst at Ferris Research. But the question is whether these changes in strategy have come too late. "As far as Sametime is concerned, IBM has historically been stronger technologically than Microsoft, but Microsoft has been playing catch up with Lotus with each release, and it is very good at that," says Shelness. " The reality is that SameTime had a technical advantage over LCS, but whether that is still the case with LCS 2007 I am not sure."

If SameTime is going to make any significant progress with regards to its market share, then it's going to have to get in to enterprises running Microsoft Office. But how? If not through technical superiority, then what about through integration with other products? Office integration is clearly crucial, and let's face it, however much Lotus can tout integration with Office and Outlook, it's never going to compare with the level of integration that Microsoft can build in to its products. LCS, Office and Communicator are built to work together from a very basic level indeed. Can IBM compete with that? Of course not.

Does that mean that the enterprise instant messaging market is going to become totally dominated by Microsoft in the way that the office software market has? Will Sametime go the same way as Lotus SmartSuite and WordPerfect Office? The answer to that has to be a resounding "no" for a number of reasons. When Office was grabbing its position as the number one office software suite, Lotus was losing market share to the tune of 35 per cent year on year, according to Shelness. Market share figures in the IM space are hard to work out accurately, but certainly nothing remotely comparable is happening, nor does it seem likely that it ever will.

The split between Microsoft and Lotus is probably about 60:40, and it doesn't seem to be shifting significantly either way. And that makes perfect sense. " I am not aware of any company which has ditched one platform in favor of the other. If you are already running Notes and Domino then you get Sametime for free, so choosing Sametime is really a no-brainer," says Shelness. Similarly, if you're a Microsoft shop, changing platforms is far too risky to consider except in extraordinary circumstances, he says.

These circumstances include when large corporate mergers and acquisitions occur. When Exxon merged with Mobil, Exchange was replaced by Domino throughout the new organization, Shelness says. "There are big corporate-wide changes when these sorts of events take place, but the vast majority of companies seem not to be in play."

So for the foreseeable future, Sametime doesn't look like it is going to be going anywhere – it's staying right where it is, neither gaining or losing market share significantly. As long as enterprises continue to use Notes and Domino, they'll probably continue to use Sametime. And as there is no mass move to Microsoft's messaging platforms in the way that there was with its Office software, Notes and Domino look reasonably secure. Of course there are other competitors in the messaging space, but none which present a particularly compelling reason to ditch Lotus. And Lotus does have one major factor in its favor: no-one ever gets sacked for buying IBM.