AOL's announcement last week that its AIMBot (instant messaging bot) technology is now available to enterprise customers is far more profound that it first appears. For AOL it is yet another restatement about its role in the enterprise instant messaging business - to be blunt, the company hasn't left the business and it ain't gonna leave it any time soon.

More important, AIMBots represent an entirely new paradigm in interactive computing, and one that is at least as important to this industry as the development of web-based applications. Why? We now have before us an applications platform that enables productive applications to be based on instant communications between people and ultimately between groups of people.

Unlike other applications venues, instant communications is inherent in this technology, not something that has to be patched in. The same may be said for presence awareness, something else that is inherent in the platform and that can be built in to an application.

Will such applications make a difference? Can you imagine how much more effective communications with field sales and operational crews will be if the communications are instant? If before a manager bothers sending messages he or she is aware of who is available? Can you imagine how much better customer relations might be if support is delivered in an instant messaging environment, and if a support representative gets back to a customer only when he or she knows the customer is available?

Applications on the Web made a difference because they were more accessible to users and easier to maintain by administrators. Instant messaging-based applications will be even more important because they will be more effective as business tools. That's one hell of a difference, one you should all look forward to, and one you should move quickly to take advantage of.