As the world of corporate instant messaging hots up now both IBM and Microsoft have products which sit in this space you'd have thought that it would have be a good idea to use some of your own technolgy when fronting customers. Image my complete lack of surprise to find that one of these companies doesn't. I mean what's the point trying to support the sale of your own software? IBM bless 'em, not the most customer orientated organisation I've worked for, use IM in their support centre. So far so fantastic. I'm a big fan of IM and believe that not to have it on every desktop these days borders on the luddite. But wait for it...you'd suspect they'd use the rather fabulous Sametime right? Oh no that would be way to easy especially as there's some cool partner developed apps for it. They use some third party tool from someone you've never heard off so when customers contact the support centre they never make the connection between IBM and Sametime. Opps IBM/Lotus Instant Messaging. I guess the most frustrating thing for Sametime fans is that the product has been able to do this sort of stuff for ages...but it wouldn't be the first time or I wager the last that a large corporate like IBM wastes it's own assets.