In my small company (of 20 people working behind a screen) we replaced most of short phone calls with IMs. So when we've something short to say, it's easier for us to drop a message on the IM and be sure it will be read even if the other person is not on the keyboard. We also use it to tell "heya pick up the phone!" in case one is busy and not responding to calls. I use "openfire" on the server side, and "pidgin" as IM client. Being also the system administrator of the company, I've written a small C# program that notifies me of system events and monitor the execution of jobs. It's much easier than browsing logs.