近几十年来，英国的信息和通信技术行业取得了杰出的成就，从2006年估值1200亿英镑增加到了2007年的1237亿英镑（欧洲信息技术观察，2007年），是欧盟市值第二高的产业。行业越做越大，他们的产品从移动通信、网络电话（VoIP）来电依赖快速的宽带速度，音频会议到高度复杂的视频会议，这些产品的市场在以势不可挡的速度增加。
2007年移动通信市场的市值为147亿英镑（Key Notes有限公司，2008年），比2006年增加了5.0%，而视频会议的市场在2005年和2006年的市值分别是180亿英镑和202亿英镑。这种技术的发展奠定了总部位于英国的公司如汇丰银行和乐购超市的发展道路，使他们在市场上变得更有竞争力，帮助他们节省了差旅费和举行会议的费用（梅农，2008年）。然而，优点总是伴随着缺点的。
The recent decades have seen outstanding triumphs of information and communication technology (ICT) industry in UK which was worth 120 €billion in 2006 increasing to 123.7 €billion (Members of the European Information Technology Observation, 2007) in 2007, the second highest in EU. The industry has become bigger; their products ranges from mobile telecommunications, voice over Internet Protocol (VoIP) calls relying on fast broadband speeds, audio conferencing to highly sophisticated product of videoconferencing and the market for these products are increasing at unstoppable pace.
The value of mobile telecommunications market was 14.7 ￡billion in 2007 (Key Notes Ltd, 2008), increasing 5.0% when compared with 2006 while the value of videoconferencing market in 2005 and 2006 were 180￡m and 202 ￡m (Key Notes Ltd, 2008) respectively. Such development in technology has paved the way for UK-based companies such as HSBC or TESCO to become more competitive in the world market, assisting them to saving expenses that used to be spent on travelling, conducting meetings (Menon, 2008). However, accompanying with advantages are always drawbacks.
Although technology has transformed UK firms and some gurus in Communication highly appreciate ICT, managers of some companies which are adversely affected by them do not think the same. Standing at the two opposite flow of information, companies which are intending to adapt ICT to replace their traditional equipment are now torn between whether to do it.
This essay will focus on ICT applications that have been harnessed in UK-based companies. More specifically, it will look at Instant Messaging application, blogs, telepresence and ‘hot-desking' that have facilitated of procedures in processing data and ways of handling works amongst British companies. Moreover, it will also examine negative effects that come along with adoption of ICT in working.
One of the main aims for the invention and revolution in ICT is to facilitate the increasingly complicated business world. In fact, most British managers have to deal with a lot of works simultaneously and it should be supreme efforts for them to resolve them if ICT were not invented or developed. How can a company like HSBC with just only 330,000 employees deal with huge date of 128 million customers without latest ICT tools and gadgets? (HSBC annual report, 2007) How much time spent by LLOYDS TSB to inform to its 16 million (LLOYDS annual report, 2007) different customers with their own information in the heading of the same letters without the Mail Merge function of Microsoft Word?
Firstly, among ICT facilities that have been deployed in UK firms, Instant messaging (IM) software such as Yahoo Messenger and iChat is the most prevalent and highly accepted among employees. Compared with other forms of communication like email or telephone..., IM software is cheaper, more convenient and really helpful. In fact, this software assists employees in handling different works simultaneously. How many different clients with different problems can you contact with at one time before the birth of IM software? With IM software, the number just depends on partners' requests but not what a machine can do.
Secondly, blogs are also prevailing among British firms as a mean to deal with customers' requests and as a marketing tool. Actually, blogs can be divided into two types: internal and external blog (Carmichael and Helwig, 2006) but we just mention about external blogs at this paragraph. External blog can aid firms in coping with customers' troubles. The fact is that problems of a customer of a firm is usually the problem th
